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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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I Warrant You! 



■Ticcljth Night. 



THOMAS MARTINDALE. 



PRICE, ONE DOIvLAR. \\^0' 






PRESS OF 

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COPYRIGHTED 1897 

BV 

THOMAS MARTINDALE 




THOMAS MARTINDALE. 



APOLOGETIC. 

IF it be true that "good wine needs no bush,'" it ought 
to be true that a good book needs no apology. " But,' ' 
my reader may ask, " is your book a good one, or does 
its goodness rest only on the modest opinion of its 
author?" Dear reader, I may safely say, without stretch- 
ing the bounds of modesty, that any book whose aim is 
to lengthen and make better the life of the American bus- 
iness man and to show him the most enjoyable way to do 
it, must be a good book. " But why the American busi- 
ness man rather than another?" Because he is the man 
whose manner of life affords the broadest room for 
improvement. He is the man who in his fierce chase 
after the almighty dollar forgets that there are such things 
as health and happiness and personal comfort, or if he 
remembers them it is only to see that they step to the side 
and not stand in the way of his chase. To stop for rest 
or recreation would be extravagance, especially as he 
knows no need of either. A knowledge of the need, 
however, is sure to come, and when it does he may thank 
his stars if it hasn't come too late. You cannot teach an 
old dog new tricks nor can you disentangle the habits of 
a lifetime from their worry and care and weave the worn 
threads into youthful toggery. 
Too late ! Too late ! 

I am aware of the dangers that lie in wait for the 
book-writer. "Oh, that mine adversary had written a 
book !" was the burden of Job's prayer, 3,500 years ago, 
and it is doubtful whether the roll of passing ce;)turies 
has as yet flattened out the peril. Flattering myself, 
however, that I am no man's adversary, I will take the 
risk and launch my little volume, hoping for it fair 
weather, favoring gales, and a broad harbor from which 
to spread its wholesome freight wherever it may do the 
most good. THOS. M. 



TO A. B. F. KINNEY. 

*1% FRIEND of thirty years' acquaintance, and the best 
i/Y all-around sportsman I have ever met; a man 
* \ equally expert with rifle, gun or fly rod; who has 
killed game of every species that the American 
Continent affords, from the grizzly bear to the ubiquitous 
rabbit, from the wild goose and its rival in migratory flight 
— the mysterious brant to the solitude-loving woodcock, 
and who is besides what the world affectionately calls " a 
royal good fellow." To him this book is respectfully 
dedicated by his sincere friend, 

Thomas Martixdale. 



MOOSEHEAD LAKE. 

This way lies the game. 

— King Hen>y VI. 

WE left Philadelphia Saturday night, September 12th, 
at 6.50, b\' the Boston express. It was hot, close and 
miserably uncomfortable. The sleeping car felt like 
an oven and we turned in before New York was reached, 
as that was the coolest thing to do. Sunday in Boston 
was rainy, raw and cold.- On Monday morning, in Ban- 
gor, we had to put on heavy flannels and get out overcoats. 
It was election day in Maine; yet, although it was 
expected that the Republican ticket would be elected by 
30,000 majority, we saw no excitement along the railroad 
in our ride from Bangor to Greenville, at the head of Moose- 
head Lake. No bands, no men around the polling places, 
with badges on. An occasional flag floated in the frosty 
air but that was all. Yet there was a silent unseen some- 
thing betokening an enormous Republican vote. (We're 
in the woods now and have heard nothing of the result as 
yet.) During our ride in the car a prophetic native sitting 
behind us broke loose in this fashion: "Darned if I 
wouldn't bet a dollar that the State would go u-nan- 
i-mus for Powers, if it weren't for the fac' that some 
ornery cuss would hear of my bet and go and vote for 
t'other fellow, just so as I would lose it." 



There are a number of little steamboats on Moose- 
head Lake, which ply backwards and forwards, carrying 
freight and passengers. Upon a time card, a sort of 
" free and easy, go as you please schedule,' ' we were told 
our boat would leave promptly at six in the morning. So 
on Tuesday we were up before five o'clock to see to our 
stores, baggage and hunting outfit being aboard on time, 
had breakfast in a hurry, first asking the landlord to tell 
the captain of the boat that we would be aboard at six and 
not to start without us. At six we were pacing the deck 
of the steamer, listening to the captain and pilot swearing 
at the engineer, who had not yet put in an appearance, 
and the boat couldn't well go without the engineer. Half 
after six came and we still waited ; the whistle was blown 
repeatedly, but no sign of the man who handled the stop- 
cocks. At eighteen minutes to seven the "knight of the 
stopcocks" was seen leisurely coming down a hillside as 
calmly as if he were an hour ahead of time. Then we 
made a start and crossed to another landing, where we 
took in tow a scow with four horses, a party of ladies and 
some lumbermen. At a quarter to eight we were off for the 
" Northeast Carry," where we arrived about an hour and 
a half late, which hour and a half caused us an exciting 
time. 

Northeast Carry is so called because it is a road or 
" carry" at the northeast end of the lake: it is two miles 
long, and the other end of the "carry" lands you on the 
banks of the Penobscot River. As we were loading our 
canoes a party landed from down the river. In the 
centre of one of their canoes a lady was seated on a 
throne-like chair covered with costly Persian rugs. 

8 




PENOBSCOT RIVER; LOADING CANOES FOR A TRIP INTO THE 



Luxurious air cushions supported " my lady's" back, and 
formed a rest for her feet. An oriental robe, tinted with 
all the hues of the rainbow, was gracefully thrown around 
her dainty limbs, mingling its colors with those of the 
autumn leaves which were strung in garlands about the 
bow of the boat. A pretty scene indeed, but yet imperfect. 
It needed a dusky Indian maiden, with no clothes on to 
speak of, waving a peacock fan. Then the picture might 
pass, on a pinch, for that of the proud Cleopatra as she 
sailed up the Cydnus to tickle the fancy and catch the 
heart of her love-sick Anton}'. 

Precisely at two o'clock Tuesday, the fifteenth, we 
paddled away from Northeast Carry. We had a glorious 
run to the ' ' half-way house, " (ten miles down). The river 
was bewitchingly beautiful . The first frosts had delicately 
colored the leaves of the maple and beech, while the 
great waving masses of ferns that fringe the river's edge 



i 



had changed their greens tor various shades of yellow 
and brown, and spreading their dainty texture along the 
banks seemed anxious to show what nature could do in 
the way of embroidery. 

Everything looked radiant and happy — save our 
three guides who were taciturn and troubled. The rea- 
son was plain. It was half-past four in the afternoon when 
we reached the "half-way house." We had stated that 
we desired particularly to be at Chesuncook Lake (twenty 
miles down the river) that night, and there would have 
been no trouble in doing the journey in daylight if the 
steamer Comet had only been more prompt in starting 
from Greenville. Now, below us, six miles down, is a 
great stretch of rapids called the ' ' Rocky Rtps, ' ' a mile 
and a half long. Below these rapids come the Pine 
Stream Falls, half a mile long. 

Our three canoes were deeplj^ loaded. Should we 
or should we not risk the run ? It was finally decided to 
risk it, and away we went, paddling for all we were 
worth, but it was dark when we reached the head of the 
"Rips," and we were "in for it." 

'Tis a beautiful sight in daylight to see the canoes 
on these rapids, rushing one after the other from shore to 
shore, dodging this rock, sliding over that shelf, or doub- 
ling around some intruding ledge, all the while striving 
to keep in the channel, which in some places is not more 
than four or five feet wide. At night, however, the sight 
is not quite so captivating, especially if the night be a 
dark one and you happen to make up a part of the 
canoe's cargo. 



We got through, however, without any greater mis- 
hap than breaking the rib of one canoe and shipping some 
water into another. A few minutes after emerging from 
the boiling " Rocky Rips" we heard the roar of the falls 
about a mile further down. The sound was grand, 
and we thought we were going to have another exciting 
run, but the guides said that we (the sports) would have 
to get out, walk through the woods to the bottom of the 
falls, (about a half a mile.) This was to lighten the 




PENOBSCOT RIVER; BATEAU ON THE RAPIDS AT "hALF-WAY" HOUSE. 



canoes. They then rearranged the loads and started 
down the falls by water while we went down by land, and 
It was darker in the woods than it was on the river. We 
stumbled and tripped over roots and logs, while the 
guides stumbled and tripped over rocks. We got through 
all right and so did they — after a fashion. One man had 



to jump out of his canoe to save it and another man 
brought his canoe down leaking. Neither man seemed 
exactl)' happy. However, there's ver}' little pure hap- 
piness in this world and perhaps the adulterated article 
tastes all the better for its mixture with a little miser}'. 
In a few minutes the loads were changed and we 
were off again down the river. After a run of about an 
hour we saw the lights of the Chesuncook House looming 
up bright and cheery in the distance, and in a little while 
we stood within its hospitable doors. We found it chock 
full of guides and "sports," and among the latter was a 
goodly proportion of " lady sports." No less than four 
of the "short skirt" variety, who, with their "little'' 
rifles, their " little " boots, their "little" jerseys, their 
"little" fishing rods and their "little" fellers, made the 
scene an interesting and we might say (although hanging 
should be the penalty for such a pun) an amooseing one. 




CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS. 

This love will undo us all. O, Cupid ! Cupid ! Cupid ! 

— Troiliis and Ctessida. 

Y 1 UMAN nature is the same the world over, and Cupid, 
pj sl}^ dog that he is, appears to know that the wild 
* 1 woods and lakes and rivers of Maine are no excep- 
tion to the rule. Ah me, if these same woods and lakes and 
rivers had tongues and knew how to use them what queer 
tales they could tell, and what incidents would come to 
light that now slide into the past unstoried and unrecorded! 
Here, in this very wilderness, hunting, fishing and 
pleasure parties yearly congregate, and among the latter 
is plenty of fit food for Cupid's powder. Young and 
beautiful girls with enough will, skill and ingenuity to 
paddle their own canoe and make love at the same time — 
if their chaperones are sleepy enough to permit the per- 
formance of such a double barreled programme. 

These fishing and pleasure parties remain no longer 
than the middle or latter part of September, but while 
they're here the crafty littlewinged god is up to his chin 
in business, and to be hit with Cupid's arrow is as com- 
mon as trouble. Ah, 

" Cupid is a knavish lad 

Thus to make poor females mad." 

But, with all due respect to William Shakespeare I 
would remind him that it is not from out the female sex 



alone that Cupid chooses his candidates for the mad- 
house. The "knavish lad" is no respecter of persons or 
sex, as the immortal William would soon discover, if his 
canonized bones could burst their cerements, quit their 
narrow bed and revisit the glimpses of the moon that 
overlights this summer habitat of the curly-headed god. 
Now I come to think of it, William's bones needn't 
go to all that trouble. The sad, lamenting tone of the 
words, 

"O, love's bow shoots buck and doe," 

proves that he knew the omnisexability of Cupid's tricks 
quite as well as he seems to have known everything else. 




AN OLD TOTE" ROAD ALONG THE PEN03SCOT IN EARL 



Funny indeed are some of the doings and undoings 
of engaged couples. Here is an instance which I hope 
the interesting couple witli " a single heart which beats 
as one" will pardon me for giving away. They made 

14 



the sad discovery that their canoe was too small to hold 
an embryo bride and her best young man at the same 
time ; but love that "laughs at locksmiths" surely would 
not cry at a less serious emergency. Its resources are 
much too ready for that. They placed two canoes side 
by side, anchored them together with a pair of encircling 
arms and with a guide to paddle in the stern of each 
"love-laden vessel," went on their way rejoicing. 

Now these guides while they know how to paddle 
know quite as well how to tattle, and tattle, in truth, 

they do 

Of the doings and the wooings, 
Of the bilHngs and the cooings. 
Of the kissings and the huggings of the pair ; 
Of the lovings, of the scoldings. 
Of the rapturous enfoldings— 
Oh, Paradise with lots of fun to spare ! 

Of course, the guides are only mortals, and as all 
this takes place within easy reach of their eye and ears 
they would be more than mortals— or less— if they didn't 
tattle. Bless your heart, the amount of it they have re- 
tailed to me would more than fill a book the size of Web- 
ster's Unabridged. You shall have the benefit of it some 
day, as I intend to pick out a few of the best, the very 
best of their stories and print them. Then, oh then, look 
out for something rich, rare and racy: but not now. 
We'll first give these turtle doves a chance to get married. 

A new crowd of visitors have appeared in the Maine 
woods and waters. Visitors who are bent on killing the 
succulent deer, the solitude-loving caribou and the lordly 
moose (the noblest Roman of them all ; 



The visitors, by the force of circumstances, are 
obliged to have guides whose particular policy it is to 
"speed the parting 'sport' and welcome the coming 
one." In the various places where these guides meet, 
Greenville, Kineo, Northeast Carry, Chesuncook House, 
Mud Carry, Eagle Lake or Churchill Lake and hundreds 
of other places, there's a great comparing of notes of the 
many things said and the many things done by the de- 
parted guests. As I have already hinted, I may at some 
future time give you the pith of a few of these notes. 

It is surprising how many Philadelphians there are 
already in the woods for the fall hunting, which started 
October ist, and how many more we hear of that are 
coming. Every hotel register is well sprinkled with 
names of residents of our Quaker Cit}-, more, I think, 
than from any other place. One of my guides liurt his 
knee, so that the limb swelled to double its natural size. 
I was considering how I could send him home (a journey 
by canoe, of over five days, which, with five more days, 
for the return of the guide who took him out, made the 
matter a verj' serious one). He relieved my mind, how- 
ever, by telling me he had heard of a doctor who was 
camped at the head of a bog a few miles awa}^ I put my 
man at once into a canoe and paddled up to the tent of 
the Esculapian disciple whom I found to l)e an eminent 
one and a Philadelphian. After looking at the man's 
damaged limb, he said : " Well, I am an expert, or con- 
sidered so, on insanity, and perhaps on one or two other of 
natures' calamities, but I am not an expert on swelled legs. 
However, this is what I advise you to do." And he told 
him. The doctor's advice seems to have been — what a 

]6 



doctor's advice sometimes is not — the proper thing, for 
the leg. got well. But before the man could call again to 
return his thanks and tell the good doctor of the cure, 
that individual had vanished further into the wilderness, 
and I've not seen him since. 




PENOBSCOT RIVER 



ITS FIRST COAT OF ICE; OCTOSER 



The natives hereabout are, in money matters, what 
the Scotch call "canny." And canny enough, some of 
them are, to give any Scotchman points and beat him 
with ease. Listen to this. A storekeeper, " a native 
here and to the manner born," had a mother. I don't 
wish you to infer, however, that he differed in this par- 
ticular from any other storekeeper. He was a dutiful 
son, and doated on his mother, showing her every mark 
of filial affection. This was, of course, very commendable 
in him, but she deserved it all, for report says she was a 
"grand w^oman." In the course of human events, the 
old lady became "worrited." Life's cares and troubles 
came so thick and fast they began to choke up the oil in 

17 



her lamp of life. It commenced to flicker and grow dim 
and needed only a puff of apoplexy to put it out entirely. 
When the end came the son's grief was touching, and the 
more .so as there was no place he could obtain a coffin 
nearer than a town three days journey away. How to 
get there and back in time to bury the old lady decently 
troubled his mind, and the indecency of burying her in 
one of their common pine receptacles was more shocking 
to his delicate sense of propriety than planting her in a 
dry goods box. At this juncture a man who had long 
known and revered the departed woman volunteered his 
services to fetch a coffin. With sturdy strokes of his 
paddle in the "dead " waters of the river and the deft use 
of the pole ia pushing up over the "quick" waters he 
hurried on. After reaching a "carry" he almost ran 
across it (two miles) to catch the first boat to the town 
where coffins were for sale, made his purchase and speeded 
back to the "carry." Putting the coffin in his canoe he 
started down the river as rapidly as elbow grease and 
paddle could drive him. When he landed, the son of the 
deceased asked him what his charge would be for the trip. 
The man replied that he would make no charge, that the 
deceased had alwa3-s been kind to him, and what he had 
done was little enough to show the good will and respect 
he had for her, and that he was glad to have been able to 
make the trip as he had done. "But" h^ said, "I 
. wouldn't mind having a plug of tobacco ; mine was all 
used up on the trip.' ' The dutiful son handed him a plug 
from behind the counter and in the most kind-hearted 
tone said: "Ten cents, please." This he said and 
nothing more. 

i8 



CALLING THE MOOSE. 

sport Roj'al, I warraut you ! 

— T-welfth Night. 

IN the latter days of September and the early weeks 
of October the mammoth deer known as the moose is 
mating. Then it is that the woods of Maine, Nova 
Scotia and New Brunswick are traversed by thousands 
of sportsmen with their guides all in search of one. thing 
— a chance to kill a bull-moose. Now the female moose, 
in one particular, is very like some other females of the 
animal kingdom ; she is coy and capricious, leading her 
lover "a merry dance o'er moss and fell," through bog 
and swamp, along the margins of lakes and ponds and 
lagoons or " logans " as the latter are called in this 
region. At night she comes down to the water to feed 
on the roots and tops of the lily pad which grows so 
abundantly in sluggish waters. If her mate be her 
escort, he usually stands on the bank, eyeing his spouse 
tenderly as she feeds, and, with ears cocked, is ever ready 
to protect her from all danger, real or fancied. 

If the bull-moose has no cow of his own but is 
merely ranging and scouring the country to find a sweet- 
heart that suits his fancy, then is the time he is apt to fall 
into a trap and a very sure one. On a still night (and, 
mind you, the night must be still) around every lake, 
pond and river where the moose frequents and feeds, the 

19 



bull hears the sounds of sweetest melody ; sounds filled 
with such plaintive, loving, caressing, lonely, forsaken, 
"come-to-my-arms " sort of cadence that he cannot resist 
the appeals. These loving sounds, termed the "call" 
with their ascending and descending notes are produced 
by the guides, their instrument being a birch bark horn. 
If the "call" be well made it will be heard b_v the bull 
miles and miles away. Pricking up his ears he will start 
on the run, thrashing through the brake, barking, bellow- 
ing, grunting and in his own affectionate manner answer- 
ing the impassioned notes of his counterfeit mistress. 
When he reaches the edge of the wood he grows wary 
and suspicious. He will steal up and down among the 
bushes listening and scenting in a " she-may-be-fooling- 
me" sort of way, and sometimes it takes many nights to 
convince him that he is the identical gentlemau the lady 
moose is "stuck on,'' and for whom she is so lovingly 
calling. Alas, how many a bull-moose Lothario falls a 
victim to his own vanity and the bewitching notes of a 
birch bark horn ! 

Although the bull-moose is a thoroughbred Mormon, 
having sometimes as many as five wives in his harem, 
yet when he has one of them specially under his protec- 
tion he will hardly leave "a bird in hand for one in the 
bush." I have myself heard him answer a "call" while 
engaged in his protective duty, and then make a start, 
which in this instance was for two miles; but the loving 
voice of the real moose called the wanderer back to his 
protectorate duties and the family bosom. I heard and 
saw all this. Saw him approach the water, step into it 
and splash it with his feet, meanwhile looking cautiously 



around as if he scented danger. And there was danger 
and a good deal of it in the air. In the front of a canoe 
sat a hunter— one of the "sports," — with rifle readj^ 
cocked, and heart throbbing and thumping as though it 
would burst the buttons off" his coat. A moment of hold- 
your-breath suspense, and then bang ! goes the 45-90 car- 
tridge, the report sounding and resounding through the 
woods and over the waters for miles around. There was 
another bang and yet another, but whether it was the 
uncertain light or the excitement which interfered with 
the hunter's aim, or whether it was due to his sitting for 
hours "still as a mouse" and in an atmosphere with the 
thermometer at freezing point, I can't say. But I can 
say that the moose escaped unharmed, untouched by the 
bullet that might have forever put an end to his Mormon 
habits and Don Juanish journeys. 

The sport of moose hunting is one that requires a 
great deal of patience and perseverance under such trying 
difficulties as exposure to cold and loss of sleep. But 
your reward is ample — plenty of excitement, and if suc- 
cessful, a magnificent antlered head as a trophy of your 
prowe.ss. 

Last night my guide and I set out to paddle up the 
inlet of a little lake we are encamped upon, with the 
intention of "calling" if it should be still enough 
to do so. There was some wind on the lake, but we 
thought there might be little or none in the forest- shel- 
tered inlet. I was tucked down in the front of the canoe 
with blankets, to keep my legs warm (for it is cold, very 
cold, up here), with heav}^ woolen socks drawn over my 
boots and a woolen cap down over my ears. We paddled 



about a mile and found the wind worse than it was on the 
lake below, and so strong as to make it hard canoeing. 
In a big bog on the right-hand side we heard a branch 
break. We stopped and listened. A deer, we both 
thought, as another and another branch broke. Then 
came the sound of heavy footfalls and we knew a moose 
was "coming to the water." We listened intently, so 
intently that I could hear the ticking of my watch, 
though it was buried under a sweater, a coat and an 
overcoat; nay, more, I heard — perhaps it may have been 
fancy — the stretching of my elastic suspenders as I 
breathed. Soon we distinguished through the dark of 
the moonless night a great object, big as a hippopotamus, 
move down the bank and step into the w^ater. The guide 
pushed the canoe up deftly and silently, but the wMud was 
at its worst at this time and blew the canoe diagonally 
against a tree top sticking out of the water on the other 
shore. This made a noise, little it is true, but yet it 
sounded, oh, how great! Just then we saw another huge 
object on the bank. Now, up to this time, we could not 
make out whether the monster in the water was a bull or 
a cow-moose (and it was rather important to know which, 
as a fine of $ioo and three months imprisonment is the 
penalty imposed for shooting a cow.) 

It was so dark I couldn't see whether the big object 
had horns or not ; but the guide settled the problem with 
"be quick! that's him on the bank — now down him!" 
I raised mv^ rifle, aimed for what I believed to be his 
shoulder, and pulled the trigger, but, horror of horrors, 
the hammer wouldn't budge ; again I sighted and pulled, 
and yet again, but all to no purpose. My rifle was more 



harmless than a pocket pistol loaded with Jersey applejack. 
The cow soon took alarm, floundered up the bank and in 
the twinkling of an eye they were both gone, he bellow- 
ing and barking through the alders, crashing down every- 
thing before him in his mad rage and fury, and she 
silently stealing away in the darkness and seclusion. 

There were two very disgusted men that night — one 
because the other didn't shoot and the other because his 
rifle wouldn't shoot. On coming into camp I made an 
examination of the trouble and found that on account of 
several days' steady rain the lock of the rifle had become 
so rusty (although greased every day) that it would not 
work, and thereby the life of a bull-moose was probably 
saved. A job also awaits a gunsmith, if one can be 
found, capable of taking a rifle apart and fixing it so that 
it will obey the trigger, at least one time out of three. 

We have now been in the woods in the northern part 
of Maine for over three weeks. In that time, I think, 
we've had but two fine days, the rest being made up of 
wind, rain, snow and ice ; winds from all points of the 
compass ; winds strong, to the strength of a gale, then 
softening down to a zephyr, but still they were winds ; 
cold winds, warm winds, moist winds, dry winds (3'ou 
see we're "moose calling," and you cannot call moose 
successfully in windy weather; that is the reason we notice 
the wind). Rains ? Yes, of all degrees and conditions ; 
soft rains and hard rains, gentle rains and furious down- 
pours—one of which is now having things its own way 
as I write this. My guides are building a break -rain, 
break- weather, break- water (or whatever you may please 
to call it) of fir trees. They are planning where to put 



the ' ' door, ' ' but as the rain seems to blow from ever}'- 
where, it will probabh^ result in carrying the fir grove 
clear around the camp. 

During this miserable rainy spell I have watched the 
game with some interest (what little of it I've been able 
to see) to learn how they relish the damp pranks of 
Jupiter Pluvius. They seem to fancy it no more than do 
their enemies the human bipeds. 

Yesterday I observed some partridges huddled under 
a big log, with feathers wet and all their glory of color 
and fluffy sleekness departed. The cock bird looked 
woe-begone and cheap and ragged — a dripping melancholy 
shadow and I thought of the poet's lament: 

" Shades of the mighty can it be 
That this all remains of thee ?" 

To-day I started a deer' from out of a clump of young 
pines, where he had been sheltering himself. Again I 
came across an old doe standing under a couple of big 
cedar trees, and after she had "lit out" I went and sat 
down in her "arbor.'' Although the rain was coming 
down in streams, yet none fell on me and I spent there a 
couple of happ3^ hours watching the capers of the only 
living things that had the courage to brave the storm — 
the red squirrels. They were busily occupied in laying 
up their winter stores which seemingly were to consist of 
pine cones, as each had one of these in his mouth. I 
noticed, though, they took good care to run along the 
ground under the logs, and not on top of them. 

We take the weather philosophically, because we're 
well prepared for it, having plenty of dry clothes, a big 

24 



camp to come to, a roaring fire, an abundance of the finest 
game in the world to eat, clear spring water (a mineral 
spring at that) to drink, good appetites and rugged 
strength to go out upon a big tramp every da}', no matter 
whether the weather is what it ought to be or whether it 
isn't. 

It is asserted that at least fifteen hundred sportsmen 
are now in the Maine woods. If so, there'll be fully two 
thousand guides, making an arm}' of say three thousand 
five hundred people, many of them with only a week or 
ten da}'s' time at their disposal, and some of them accom- 
panied by ladies. So, while it is bad for us it is much 
worse for "the other fellers," whose short supply of time 
won't allow them to wait for the glad sunshine to come. 
Why, therefore should we complain ? 



AN UNEXPECTED TREAT. 

who comes here? My doe? 

— Metiv Wives. 

'7T COUPLE of evenings since we had a quiet spell for a 
LY few hours, and my guide and I started out moose 
^ \ "calling." We pushed our canoe very cautiouslj' 
up the inlet of the little lake we're camped on, paddling 
as lightly as possible, stopping frequently to listen, peer- 
ing with expectant eyes into every bunch of alders, every 
clump of young pines, hoping against hope that we might 
see a moose " coming to water/' It was about five in the 
afternoon, and the scenery along the brook was clothed in 
beauty beyond the poets fancy or the painter's palate. 
The brown and green tints of the frosted and unfrosted 
ferns ; the tufts of waving grasses with their green blades 
tipped with yellow; the alders just beginning to put on 
their autumn brown ; the red maple, the 5^ellow birch, the 
dark green pines, the stately juniper, the sad cypress, and 
all mirrored in the tawny stream that flowed lazily 
beneath, without a ripple to disturb or fret the reigning 
silence. 

Silence ? Yes ! Nature seemed to be up to her neck 
in the depths of the hush as the guide shoved our canoe 
on a pine root to anchor it. After he did so, he took up 
his birch bark horn and gave the three "calls" of the 
cow-moose. First, the short, tremulous wail; then the 

26 



more urgent and commanding one, and lastly, the long, 
resonant, loving, coaxing, beseeching appeal, which no 
living bull-moose with any bowels of compassion can 
resist. To produce this call the guide winds the horn 
around in continued circles, the motion giving the sound 
that trembling, undulating effect which the genuine 
article always has. 

Immediately after the "call "we heard a branch 
break in the woods to the right of us, a hundred yards, 
perhaps, away. I took up my field-glass and watched 
until I saw a couple of bewitching eyes, a pair of ears, 
erect and vigilant, and the peculiarly graceful neck which 
I knew could belong only to the doe deer. She stood 
between two cedars and for a while watched us intently, 
then stole carefully up the stream to where it turned sharp 
to the left and where a bank covered with marsh grass 
made a pretty foreground for the picture. Here she 
planted herself, rigid, with nostrils dilated, ears standing 
straight up, eyes fixed on us, and with every other indica- 
tion that w'e were the only object that at present occu- 
pied her attention and curiosity. The guide gave the 
moose "calls' ' every few minutes and they could be heard 
miles away, yet there she stood, truly, ' ' a thing of beauty" 
if not a joy forever. 

The day waned, the sun sank behind a mass of 
clouds, twilight came and went, still there she stood, 
motionless, entranced, bewitched, silhouetted against the 
evening sky like a graceful statue. And when the cloak 
of night shut us from her sight then her curiosity seemed 
to become uncontrollable. We could not see, but heard 
her cross the brook softlv, then steal down the left bank, 



picking her wa}- daintil_y behind the alders and cedar trees 
until she was abreast of us. A few minutes of silence 
and we could almost imagine her letting loose her curi- 
osity : "Who can these mortals be? Are they living 
creatures? And what heavenly music that was! Poor 
things, how can they sit so long on the water and keep so 
st!ll ! And what are they after anyway?" She no doubt 
thought all this if she didn't sa}^ it. Then she stepped 
out into the open, and came so close to the canoe we 
could almost have hit her wdth a paddle. Did we shoot? 
No, sir ! No thought had we of killing that trusting, 
unsuspecting creature, whose beautj^ and grace of form 
and pose had for an hour entranced our sense with a 
vision of loveliness we can never forget. Venison? Why 
we would have gone without the dainty dish for many a 
da}^ rather than have gotten it by the foul murder of tliat 
gentle, soft-eyed, gazelle-like doe of Chesuncook L,ake. 



'^ifc^^.eikJ^ 



28 



KILLING THE CARIBOU. 

Here's spcit indeed ! 

— Cynibeline. 

WE had been semi-prisoners for about three weeks, 
with rains and high winds, which effectually pre- 
vented the hunting of big game successfully in 
the location of our camp. Early on the morning of 
Monday, October 5th, my guide said to me "suppose we 
go and try to hunt that dam." We had heard a great 
many stories al^out a dam at the head of the stream 
which forms the inlet to our little lake but were 
inclined to think some of tliese stories Munchausenish. 
None of our guides had ever seen the dam and had 
only hear.-ay for its location and distance. One 
maintained it was 1)ut five miles away; another six. 
and the third one vowed it was a good eight miles off; 
besides there are two branches to the stream, and no one 
knew on which branch the dam was placed. So the guide 
and I started in light hunting order, with a few bouillon 
capsules which were to serve us for dinner and supper 
and possibly breakfast, if we shouldn't get back ihat 
night. We found a "spotted" path through the woods 
that led to an old " tote ' ' road up which we went splash- 
ing through the water accumulated by weeks of rain ; up 
to our very knees in nuid sometimes, slipping, falling and 
stumbling over cedar roots, climbing over and under 



windfalls, until we reached an old lumber camp, which 
the guide went down to investigate. No Maine guide 
can pass an old camp for the first time without having a 
' ' look in " to see if any thing's been left that he can make 
use of. Before he reached the buildings three deer, one 
of them a big buck, jumped out of some raspberry bushes, 
and bounded away over the creek and into the woods 
beyond. 

I started for them and stalked them for nearly an 
hour, until I came within shooting distance of the does ; 
but although I heard the buck I could not get my eyes 
upon him, and the does I did not want; so I returned to 
the road. We now had a journey of three and a half 
miles over a road probably as bad as could be found any- 
where ; that is, if mud, water, alders, alder roots, cedar 
roots, windfalls and slippery rocks could make it so. 
There's an end to all things, however, and the road 
finally led us to a "landing"' on the brook where a large 
number of logs were left high and drj' from the last drive. 
Some of them, in fact, looked as if they had been there 
for years. There were probably half a million feet 
in and near this spot. We crossed the brook and found 
a logging road, which we followed for a mile or more, 
but no signs of a dam. We heard an occasional deer 
cracking a dry limb in the dense wood or thicket of small 
pines, which bordered the roadway on either side, but 
couldn't get a sight of them. Here the guide said we'd 
better turn back, as we were going in the wrong direction, 
but I proposed walking at any rate half a mile further,, 
and probably we might find something worth shooting at. 
We made one turn in the road when we heard a branch 



break in front of ns. We stopped to listen, and soon a 
calf caribou came out from the right hand side. 

It looked up and down, saw us, but moved into the 
forest on the other side (which was here open and filled 
with stunted spruce trees, growing in a thick bed of 
moss). The calf was followed a minute later by a cow. 
The guide whispered, "now look out for horns." But 
still another cow came out and crossed the road, followed 
by a sight I shall never forget. A pair of monster antlers 
were very slowly pu.shed out into the road, and after them 
the head and neck of as grand a caribou bull as sun ever 
shone upon. It was fully a second later before the animal 
came into full view. 

The guide whispers, "Hit him in the sliouldei ; l)e 
steady and sure." And I was sure, for when I fired my 
45-go rifle almost at the same instant the caribou dropped 
in his tracks. He hadn't moved an inch afier being hit. 
The ball had pa.ssed through his left shoulder and out at 
the neck. We soon covered the hundred yards or more 
of distance which separated us from his lordship, whom we 
found down on his knees unable to ri.se. And then a bat- 
tle royal started between Lon Barnes, the guide, and the 
bull. Barnes wanted to finish him with the back of the 
ax, and in order to do so, he would angle around him, 
trying to get in a blow on the forehead. The caribou, 
however, although unable to raise himself to his feet, 
could, and did, swing his great head and antlers around 
in every direction with vicious and lightning-like move- 
ment. Had he caught the guide with his "frontlets" or 
antlers it would have been a sorry day for that individual. 
Another shot from my rifle, however, settled the matter. 




THE "SPORT" AND HIS NOBLE PRIZE. 



We then elevated his head and shoulders upon some skids 
that were in the road so as to keep him in good shape, 
and then tramped back to our camp, a walk of fully six 
miles. Next day our three guides, my son and I went 
back, taking a camera with us, and, although the morn- 
ing was rainy and squally, we obtained a fairly good 
picture of him. As he was frozen pretty stiff, the men 
raised him up on his feet, and, fastening a rope from each 
antler to a couple of trees on both sides of the road (so 
as to hold his head up, and thus steady the whole car- 
cass), the photographer (my young son) was enabled to 
take him in a standing position. 

The guides skinned him, taking his head off 
unskinned. The next da}', in order to incur no risk of 
having the head spoiled by the wet weather or careless 
skinning, I sent a guide with it to Greenville (a three 
days' journey there and back.) The bull was fourteen 
years old. The antlers are thirty-two inches long from 
the base of skull to the tips, and have thirteen points 
on each side. 

The taxidermist to whom the head was sent said "it 
was the finest he had ever seen and the largest he had 
any record of." On the night of the fifth of October, 
although very tired and badly used up with our fright- 
fully hard walk, neither the guide (Barnes) nor I slept 
much. The caribou would haiuit our sleep. We could 
see him almost every minute of the night and even now 
the memory of the scene is as fresh and vivid as it was 
on that day, and I am sure will be for many moons to 
come. 



MORE OF THE MOOSE. 



The Paragou of Animals. 

— Hamlet. 

THK same morning of the caribou hunt, we left the 
old bull lying in the road, and started back upon 
our tracks, at about eleven o'clock, to prosecute our 
search for the dam we had originally started out to find. 
Upon reaching the brook we followed it upward some 
distance, until the guide, who was quite "done up," said 
he'd make a fire and boil some hot water in a tin dipper for 
m}^ dinner. I decided, however, to push on until I found 
that dam, telling him to stay where he was until my 

return . 

The stream here 

was choked up with 
cut logs, which made 
it nice and easy walk- 
ing, or easy jump- 
ing from log to log. 
Twenty minutes of 
this sort of travel 
and I reached the 

BARNES, THE GUIDE, " DONE UP '• ON A CARIBOU HUNT, - 1 1 1 r 1 

DRAWS COMFORT FROM HIS PIPE. long-looked ' lor daui . 




Climbing on top of it my eye caught the view of as lovely 
a spot for big game to feed in as could well be imagined. 
The water had been drawn off during the late spring, 
and a luxurious growth of swale grass, cranberry bushes 
and young alder shoots had sprung up in wild and wanton 
profusion. 

I sat me down on the dam and let my senses wallow 
in the sight. A stiff breeze was blowing, swaying the 
tall grasses into waves of graceful motion and bringing to 
my ear a gentle rustling sound — o. twiti&r'mg pianissimo, 
as it were, in one of Nature's pastorales, and which all 
lovers of her rural melodies will recognize and appreciate. 

After my fancy had plaj-ed awhile it ran up against 
the thought : ' ' What a tempting sanctuary is this for 
big game! Surely it won't be long without its antlered 
heads and arched necks." Instinctively, I crept behind 
some bushes and watched and waited. Fifteen or twenty 
minutes passed and without my expectations being filled. 
Then I thought of my tin cup of bouillon, and, fearing it 
would be spoiled, reluctantly left the enticing spot and 
traveled back over the logs to where the guide was wait- 
ing for me. 

After drinking my bouillon I told the guide how 
near the dam was ; what a wonderfully attractive spot for 
game it must be, told him to take my rifle and go up and 
look at some big moose tracks that I had found, and I 
would boil another cup of water for his dinner while he 
was gone. The fire had burned down low. I put on 
more wood and sat and watched the roaring blaze, and 
whistled while supreme contentment oozed out of me 



from every pore. My reverie lasted till broken by Barnes, 
who rushed in with hardly enough wind left to shape his 
words. He told me that just as he got to the dam a 
5'oung bull-moose, with a monstrously big cow- moose, had 
come out of the woods and were feeding in the open close 
to the dam. It didn't take long for us to get back to that 
dam. We jumped like gymnasts across the logs and 
made some leaps that might have caused the kangaroo 
to blush and hide her head in her pouch. 

We approached the dam itself, however, very care- 
fully, and peered over the edge of it to the open space 
beyond. The bull was not in sight and the cow was more 
than five hundred yards away. They, no doubt, had 
scented the smoke from our fire, although the wind was 
ver}^ nearly directly in our favor. But we soon saw that 
the cow was uneasy and suspicious. She would raise her 
mane up and then elevate her head in the air, holding it 
there for a minute or so, and then start feeding again. 
This she did three times, and then she gave a call that 
was almost instantly answered by the bull, who came 
rushing out of the woods to the back and to the right of 
her, as she ran to meet him. Then they wheeled about, 
threw up their great heads, and with dilating nostrils, 
both sniffed the suspicious scent which had alarmed the 
cow so much. They were at this moment full}' six to 
seven hundred yards ofi", and would soon make a dash for 
the woods, for every moment seemed to increase their 
alarm . 

I said to Barnes: "What do you think about it? 
Can I down that bull at this distance?" 

36 



"I don't think you can, but there's no telling what 
a 45-90 rifle can do. If you're going to try it you'd bet- 
ter begin, as they'll soon be off." 

I decided to try the shot, and still keeping under the 
edge of the dam, I fired, aiming for the bull's shoulder. 
My shot was a clean miss. Then we saw a scene that 
illustrated the amount of human nature that underlies the 
instinct of the moose. As the report of the rifle rang out 
and echoed around the edges of the forest encircling the 
open space, the cow-moose ran here and there in every 
direction, as if fear had entirely dethroned her courage 
and prudence. But the bull stood still, rigid, erect, his 
mane up, while every hair on his body bristled defiance. 

I fired cartridge No. 2, making another miss, and a 
repetition of the scene just described, followed, the bull 
standing still as ever. I reasoned that the strong quar- 
tering wind to the right, was deflecting the bullets, so I 
aimed a third time a little more to the left, and fired. 

You should have seen the sight that followed. The 
bullet had struck the bull and he started with a rush and 
a crash like a locomotive off the rails. Away he went, 
straight for the woods to the left. The guide and I then 
sprang upon the top of the dam and watched the cow who 
was still running about in the open, thoroughly panic 
struck. A couple of minutes elapsed and then the bull, 
although wounded, ran back out of his stronghold of 
timber to get the cow in out of danger. This gave me a 
chance to fire three more shots at him. While he was 
circling around the cow to lead her into the safe seclusion 
of the woods, he seemed to say : "You can shoot at me 



all 3'ou like, and kill me if you can, but I 11 save my frou 
or perish in the attempt ! ' ' 

And just as soon as she was headed and started 
right, then he got away also, both entering the woods to 
the left. 

And then the question was: What shall we do? 
Barnes said : "Let's go back to camp and give him a 
chance to lie down. If he's mortally wounded we'll 
find him, but I fear you've given him only a flesh 
wound." We stopped at our fire for Barnes to drink his 
bouillon which now was cold, and then commenced our 
eight- mile journey to our tent. On the road down, before 
we reached the logging camp, where we had started the 
buck deer and the two does the day before, I crept along 
very cautiously, hoping to catch a sight of the big buck. 
The road that led by the old camp had a path in which 
were several long logs leading lengthwise from the road 
right to the camp, and walking on these logs with rubber 
boots made no noise at all. Suddenly I came upon no 
less than six deer feeding in and around a lot of rasp- 
berry bushes. Four of them were so bunched at one 
time I could have placed a bullet that would have gone, 
possibly through four of them, certainly through three. 
But they were all does ; the buck wasn't there and I stole 
back to the " tote " road without even alarming them. 

It was dark when we reached camp. We were tired, 
very tired. The excitement of the day had been so great 
that neither guide nor ' ' sport ' ' could sleep. The caribou, 
and the moose, and the six deer kept marching in proces- 
sion through our mind, followed b\' the queries: "Will 

38 



we find the moose? Is he killed? Will anything get at 
the caribou during the night and mutilate him ?" In our 
mind's eye we saw the old fellow dropping in his tracks. 
Saw the bull-moose rushing from the woods to coax the 
wife of his bosom back from the reach of bullets and into 
a place of safety. 

And thus the day's adventures would reenact them- 
selves with vividness and over and over again till daylight 
broke. Then ready and eager to solve our caribou queries, 
if they were solvable, all the guides (three), my son and 
myself had breakfast, shouldered camera, axes, rifles and 
ropes and started off with the intention first to photograph 
and skin the caribou and secure his head and then to trail 
the wounded moose. It was half past one when we reached 
the dam, and in a few minutes we found the trail of the 
bull by discovering a pool of blood in the swale grass and 
another considerable pool on the edge of the woods. 
After that the trail of the cow-moose and the bull were 
so intermixed that it was hard to unravel them But 
there were five of us, and each would every minute or 
two discover a trace, a splash of blood on the side of a 
tree, or a drop on a leaf, or a streak of it on some dead- 
fall the wounded moose had stepped over. At one place 
he had passed between two trees, which had been a tight 
fit, as it showed the blood from where he was struck (on 
the left hip.) down his leg as far as the knee. At another 
place he had stopped and quite a circle of blood was 
formed. But nowhere was there any sign that he had 
lain down. Nowhere was there blood enough to show 
that he had been mortally hit. We followed his trail for 
over two hours and then reluctantly concluded that our 

39 



moose would live and prosper perhaps for many a year to 
come, as he would always in future be duly careful to 
keep as far aw^ay from the range of a rifle as his haunts 
and habits would permit, and he would never, never 
again feed in a meadow in daylight during the open 
season, for a moose only needs to be shot at once to 
make him forever after the most careful animal that roams 
the wild, wild woods. 



>^ 



THE GREAT NORTHWEST. 

Well hast thou lessou'd us. 

— Tilus Andotiicus. 

THE first thing that struck 1113- attention on my trip, 
was Canada's nagging policy in regard to American 
travel. 

I had two guns and a case of shells on which duty 
was claimed. These, I explained, had been in use over 
six years, and that I was only going to shoot a few days 
in Canada and then would return with them across the 
borders, but my explanation had no weight. The shells 
were counted and duty at the rate of 35 per cent, exacted 
upon them, with conditions that if I took the guns back 
out of Canada within two months they would refund the 
duty, but not if they should be kept a day over that limit. 
Such is international courtes}' between two countries with 
a border line of four thousand miles. 

I passed through the famous "Soo" Canal, where 
our Government is enforcing its "retaliation policy" 
against Canada. It was therefore interesting to hear the 
conversations of the Canadians and Americans on the ves- 
sel and along the canal. We were detained there four 
hours in getting an entrance to the lock. The Canadians 
point out the fact that their own canal, which is now in 
course of construction, will be finished in two years, and 
then will come their time to retaliate by putting up the 



tolls to i\merican vessels in the Welland and other Cana- 
dian water-ways. They say it was a small, petty thing 
for a great country like the United States to do, and that 
Canada will more than get even in the long run. 

The Americans, on the other hand, say it serves the 
Canadians right, for they are always nagging and bullying 
us behind England on the fisheries, the Behring Sea and 
other questions, and it is time to teach them a lesson. 
The commerce passing through this canal in Canadian 
bottoms is ver}- small, last year being only a little over 4 
per cent, of the whole. Out of an almost continuous pro- 
cession of steamers, tugs and sailing vessels which we 
passed in the " Soo " River only one was Canadian, and 
she was a small fishing smack. So, pecuniarily, the 
retaliation policy don't amount to much ; it is the sting 
and smart of it that counts. American craft go through 
free and Canadian craft pay 20 cents per ton toll. 

It is said that more tonnage passes through the 
" Soo " Canal than through the famous Suez Canal. The 
" Soo " Canal is open only about seven months in the 
year, and it is totally inadequate for the immense traffic 
passing through it ; therefore our Government is building 
a new canal, with a lock 800 feet long, 80 feet wide and 
21 feet deep. The present lock is 515 feet in length, with 
a 60 foot entrance, 80 foot inside and about 14 foot 6 in 
depth. The Canadian Government is making theirs 1000 
feet long and 60 feet wide throughout, but if they do not 
put on an increased force of workmen it will be five years 
before it can be completed. The United States Canal is 
reasonably sure of completion within two years. 

42 



There is no object lesson equal to this canal for 
demonstrating the enormous resources of the great North- 
west. As far as the eye could reach in both directions 
was an unending procession of vessels bound both up the 
lakes and down ; those passing down being loaded to the 
deep water line with iron ore, grain, lumber, etc. ; those 
passing up, with coal and general merchandise. And so 
it is every day while navigation is open. 

What a lot of people with diversified pursuits our 
Canadian Pacific steamer was carrying ! Sitting opposite 
to me at table was a typical Englishman, formerly a cof- 
fee planter in Ceylon, but now a large land proprietor in 
Manitoba. Another Englishman had been out to the 
East Indies elephant shooting, and was on his way to the 
Rocky Mountains to tr}' his hand on the grizzly bear. 
He was a strenuous advocate of the Martini-Henry rifle 
for large game, and wouldn't think of shooting a Win- 
chester (probably because it is American). A number of 
passengers were going to shoot prairie chickens, ducks, 
etc., others were on their way to buy land near Winni- 
peg. One wanted to sell land up there, and wanted to 
sell it badl3^ Merchants were returning from England, 
Montreal and Toronto, having bought their fall and win- 
ter stock : others were journeying across the continent 
en route to Japan and China. 

Coming up the " Soo " (or Sault Ste Marie) River, 
out of Georgian Bay, on Sunday last, I was profoundly 
impressed with the magnitude of the resources of the 
great Northwest. An almost continuous string of grain 
or ore laden schooners, steamers, barges and "whale- 
backs" kept passing us for miles and miles, and on 

43 



arriving at the mouth of the canal, which is but a mile 
long, we were detained five hours waiting our turn to get 
through its one lock. The vessel in front of us was the 
largest steamer on the lakes — the Mariposa — over 4000 
tons burthen, and while the lock comfortably accommo- 
dated four large schooners at one lockage, this steamer 
just about filled the lock, so that no other vessel could 
enter. She belonged to Ashtabula, O., and was going 
up with a light cargo of coal and would load iron ore for 
her return trip. The Canadians seem to think that our 
Government made a mistake in enforcing the retaliation 
policy on this canal, but don't care very much about it, 
now that the astonishment and surprise at the action have 
worn away. The Canadian Pacific Railway is the prin- 
cipal and about the only suflFerer, and they cannot be very 
severly hit, as the total Canadian tonnage passing through 
the canal last year was, as I have said, but a fraction over 
4 per cent, of the whole. 

On reaching Fort William (an old Hudson Bay 
Company's fort), the very first thing to attract my notice 
was a big wagon load of fine French clarets, brandies 
and Canadian whiskies, marked ' ' Hudson Bay Company. ' ' 
I know not how strong the proof of the liquors may have 
been, but I do know that the load itself was to me proof 
strong as Holy Writ, that the people up this way have 
expensive tastes and the wherewithal to gratify them. 
From an unusually intelligent and well informed conmier- 
cial traveler, Robert Atkinson, of London, Canada, I 
learned that the head offices of the Hudson Bay Company 
for this district are at Winnipeg, and that on his last trip 
to that town there were no less than thirty-two drummers 

44 



at the principal hotel ; that these represented the dry goods 
and ready-made clothing interests alone, and that the buy ers 
for these departments of the Hudson Bay Company looked 
at every man's samples before they bought a dollar's 
worth. Now, as this company also sells groceries, wines, 
crockery, hardware, drugs, stoves and tinware, guns, 
ammunition, etc., the reader will easily see what an 
enormous trade they still monopolize up here. 

At Fort William the C. P. R. R. has three big grain 
elevators, which at the present time are full to the roof, 
and yet they are shipping by lake and through the 
canal as fast as they can get boats loaded. The capacity 
of these elevators is 1,250,000 bushels. The train we 
met at Fort William was the trans-continental express. 
It had eleven cars, two of which were filled with 
Chinese passengers ticketed through from New York 
to China. Two cars of colonists were going out to 
settle at different points on the line. The cars were clean 
and comfortable looking, and were used at night as sleep- 
ers, having the same arrangement as to berths as the 
Pullmans, without, of course, the luxurious appoint- 
ments which characterize the latter. There is but one 
through train a day, and this averages about twenty-two 
miles an hour. 

The road is a single track, w^ell ballasted, has splen- 
did rolling stock and good motive power. I am informed 
that the management of the line contemplates bestowing 
the same attentions on the through first -class passengers 
as the trans-Atlantic steamship companies do, such as 
passing fresh fruit, beef tea, lemonade, etc., around to the 
passengers frequently during the day. This will be an 



45 



innovation that other lines would do well to follow. The 
Michigan Central already has commenced to present 
bouquets of flowers to passengers on reaching a certain 
station. Such little attentions do not cost much and they 
make a good advertisement. 

The city of Winnipeg, with a population of 25,000, 
was a veritable surprise to me. It has broad streets, half 
as wide again as our Market Street, four lines of street 
car tracks, electric lights, electric railways, opera house 
(with Margaret Mather now playing there), fine stores, and 
a hotel that would put to shame any we have in Philadel- 
phia. It has a frontage on the main street of 216 feet, is 
seven stories high, with a rotunda forty by ninety feet, a 
dining-hall fift}' feet wide, ninety feet long and twenty six 
feet high, grandly lighted by three copper electroliers, 
aided by a blaze of w^all fixtures. Then there are massive 
stone fire-places and also a balcony at one end, where an 
orchestra enlivens the dinner hour. 

The hotel has Turkish and ordinary baths, private 
supper and dining-rooms, is heated by steam and lighted 
throughout b}' an elaborate electric plant. The charges 
are from $3 to $7 per day, and the hotel is well supported. 
This hotel, this city, this Canadian Pacific Railroad, with 
its progressive management, are indexes of the enterprise 
of the Canadian Northwest. Here the "star of empire 
may well hold its sway;'' here future provinces and 
cities will rise from the level table land of the prairies, 
by the limpid waters of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, 
and become rich, prosperous and happy in the lavish and 
generous returns from the tillage of the fruitful soil. 
Future colonies will leave their mother country, where 

46 



the "dry hvisks of poverty " are their support to find here 
a glorious paradise of plenty. Here will grow up a 
strong-lunged, magnetic generation, which must wield a 
beneficient influence upon the rest of Canada, and why 
not upon sections of our own country that must surely 
come in contact with its almost boundless agricultural 
wealth and resources? 

As we were about leaving Winnipeg yesterday, a 
banker of that lively town, in speaking of the boundless 
expanse of rich wheat lands around Winnipeg, said : 
' ' While the land in the neighborhood of Winnipeg raises 
fine wheat and lots of it, one thousand miles further north 
they raise just as much wheat to the acre and just as 
good." One thousand miles further north. Think of it ! 
I do not know and could not find out in what latitude 
Winnipeg is situated. I asked the clerk at the Manitoba 
House, among others. He said he really couldn't tell, 
but one thing sure, it is an awful cold latitude. The 
railway guide says it is one thousand four hundred and 
twenty-four miles from Montreal, and 3^et good lands 
are being cultivated a thousand miles still further north. 
This fact helps to explain the enormous quantities of 
freight the Canadian Pacific Railroad is sending down, 
both by rail and water, to the lakes and through the St. 
Lawrence River. 

At Regina, the capital of the province of Assiniboia, 
we were much interested in the House of Parliament, 
the Governor's Mansion and the barracks and drill ground 
of the famous mounted police force. All are equipped 
with electric lio^hts and other modern conveniences. 



The mounted police is said to be the best force 
of its kind in the world, and numbers over one thousand 
men. They patrol the whole northwest, including the 
provinces of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Athabasca and 
Alberta, keeping in order the Indian population as well 
as the rest of the inhabitants who might be inclined to 
stray from the right path. 

Canada's treatment of the Indian problem has long 
been acknowledged as wiser, more humane and more suc- 
cessful than ours has been, and, as a result, we see the 
prairies dotted everywhere with Indian tents, the men 
being occupied with the business of farming or the grazing 
of cattle. They follow these pursuits contentedly and appar- 
ently with good financial results. They are well dressed, 
seemingly prosperous and have overcome their instincti^■e 
desire for the excitement of the hunter's life. 

What a sad sight is the great square piles of buffalo 
bones stacked up at different stations awaiting shipment 
to the East, where they usefully wind up their existence 
in the sugar refineries and manufactories of phosphates. 
The men who gather the bones up on the prairies and 
haul them to the station get six dollars per ton. As an 
indication of the extent of the business, the quantity sent 
forward from Moo.sejaw Station alone is counted by the 
hundred carloads. 

When it is recollected that the few pounds of bleached 
bones forming one skeleton and bringing perhaps ten 
cents at the cars, were once the framework of the noblest 
animal that ever roamed over the continent, and that had 
he been even slightly protected b}' law, by common sense 
or by humane feelings, he would have furnished us with the 

48 



luxurious robe and succulent meat for years to come, the 
sight is indeed a sorrowful one. Soon these ghastly piles 
of bones will be carried awa}^ and nothing left to mark 
the haunts and history of the buffalo except tradition and 
the scarred sides of the slopes and valle3'S where he dug 
out his " wallow.' ' 

The coyote we saw vet)' often after passing Moose- 
jaw ; also foxes and badgers, and as for gophers, their 
name is legion. Wild geese, ducks and snipe we also 
saw on many fresh water ponds and lakes. To-morrow, 
the 15th, the close season for the prairie chicken expires, 
and thousands of guns will be cracking away during the 
day and to the end of the season. We start out at four in 
the morning and expect to have a chance at a flock of wild 
geese that settle towards sundown in some wheat stubble 
a half mile from here. We also intend trying our guns 
on the plump and gann^ prairie hen. 

This afternoon we were out snipe shooting for a few 
hours, and on our tramp passed quite a number of Indian 
tents and villages, but neither the Indians nor their mot- 
ley variety of dogs paid an}'- attention to us, excepting 
one old buck with a red blanket thrown over his shoul- 
ders. This fellow followed us silenth' around, watching 
us intently, and although sa^dng nothing seemed to be 
piling up a lot of thinking. 

A party of ladies and gentlemen are expected here 
to-morrow^ in their private car on a shooting trip to the 
coast. The}^ eat and sleep in the car, and have been, so 
far, very successful in shooting and fishing. We passed 
them twenty miles away this forenoon. They expect to 
start from here on a side hunt for antelope and bears. 




AN OLD TOTE" ROAD! THE AUTHOR WITH HIS RIFLE IN THE DISTANCE. 



50 



I am writing this letter sitting down on the broad 
prairie beside a palace car (where we are luxuriously 
housed and fed), waiting until the beds are made up and 
breakfast is prepared. It is something certainly novel as 
well as very pleasant to sit down in this latitude to a 
dinner of wild roast goose, teal duck, prairie chicken, 
fresh peaches, sweet potatoes, ice cream, etc., with plenty 
of drinkables besides, and served by competent waiters. 
For all this luxury we are indebted to the Worcester 
(Mass.) Excursion Company, who are on their twenty- 
second annual shooting tour, and who have invited us to 
join them for the season. Seven gentletiien of the party 
started, with ninteen horses, tents, provisions, etc., for a 
hunt after antelopes and grizzly bears, their destination 
being some thirty miles from Maple Creek. They expect 
to be gone a week, and of course each man will not be 
satisfied until he bags his antelope or has had a wrestle 
with a bear; in the meantime, we that are left are content 
to worry the prairie chicken and mallard duck with our 
dogs and guns. 

One through train from the Pacific and one from the 
Atlantic stop here for a few minutes each day, and on 
their arrival the platform is crowded with Indians dressed 
up in their best "bib and tucker," which means plenty 
of feathers, paint and tomahawk. With a special eye to 
business and the white man's pocket book they come 
provided with their peculiar wares, such as buffalo horns 
nicel}^ mounted as hat racks, trinkets of various kinds, 
pipes, etc. For some reason or other the Indian has a 
superstition against being photographed. Now almost 
every train has its kodak fiend, and no sooner does he 

51 



catch a glimpse of ' ' Poor Lo ' ' than out comes his box 
and the fun begins. On Saturday one of these enthusi- 
astic fiends tried to get a snap shot at an oM "buck " but 
didn't meet with much success. The moment the old 
fellow saw the photographer getting ready to point his 
box he rushed at him with an uplifted stick, jammed him 
against the car, took possession of his kodak and doubt- 
less would have wiped up the floor with the picturetaker 
had the mounted police not interfered and ordered him 
back into the train. Yet the fiend wasn't satisfied. He 
went into the car and thrust the camera out of one of the 
windows. Instantly the alarm was given, and every 
squaw and brave, to the number of thirty or more, dived 
under the station platform, leaving the discomfited artist 
to the jeers and hooting of the crowd. One of the ladies 
of our hunting car, not knowing of this trait in the 
Indian's character, saw a bunch of squaws lounging 
around. She got out her kodak and commenced to fix 
it for a snap shot, when one of the squaws, in her native 
tongue, threatened her with violence if she turned 'that 
eye" on them. The lady didn't understand the panto- 
mime, and proceeded to take the picture. The squaw 
very angrily pulled a big stone out from under her blanket 
and threw it with all her force, hitting her on the wrist, 
inflicting a painful blow. There will be no furthur use 
for the kodak on this car for awhile. The telegraph 
operator here says the Indian is equally afraid of the 
" ticker,' ' and it is hard work to get them near it. 

On the night of the great prize fight between " Mr. " 
Sullivan and "Mr." Corbett the cowboys, ranchers, 
railway men, and in fact all the inhabitants of this 



frontier settlement, were in and around the station. The 
newspapers of Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska 
having formed a syndicate to have the news wired to 
them in detail, it was sent over the Canadian Pacific 
wires. The operator sat in his office, and in a conver- 
sational tone read the account of the fight as it passed 
over the wires, when it would be communicated to the 
outside crowd. Toward the last, when the "big fellow," 
"Mr." Sullivan, was getting the worst of it, the excite- 
ment of the listeners was so great they couldn't keep still. 
Even the stolid Indian got enthused and grunted his sat- 
isfaction, and when the last sentence was ticked out, then 
pandemonium was let loose. The only hotel in the town 
was besieged with thirsty customers, and all night long 
the yelpings of the coyote were blended with the yells 
of excited humanity. 

The Bishop of O'Appell, who is a baronet of Eng- 
land as well as Bishop, preached a sermon in the little 
chapel here yesterday that w^as remarkable for its pro- 
fundity as well as its eloquence. He is the leader in a 
movement among the Northwest churchmen which is 
intended to give new life to the Church of England by 
trying to arouse it from its apparent lethargj^ and by 
claiming for it the undivided support of the people on the 
ground of its traditions, history and venerable age. In 
his discourse he easily disposed of the dissenting churches 
and then in a learned argument he paid his respects to the 
Roman Catholic Church and proceeded to show that the 
Church of England was centuries older than the Roman 
Church. It seemed a great waste of force to preach such 
a sermon to the little handful of people he had for an 



audience, but as he leaves this countr}- to spend his last 
days in England, after preaching here for twenty-six 
years, he no doubt thought it well to give the people 
something to think about. 

The Canadian Pacific Railway being the most acces- 
sible route between Alaska and the East, some very val- 
uable train loads of merchandise pass over its rails. 
Probably one of the most valuable trains of freight ever 
hauled in the same number of cars passed through here 
yesterda3^ It was a train made up of ten cars of seal skins, 
booked through to London. Each car was valued at over 
$200,000 — over $2,000,000 in all. The train had a wreck 
coming down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It 
parted in two ; the back portion ran into the front, smash- 
ing things up very generall}^ What a calamit}' it would 
have been — what a rude shock to the American feminine 
heart had that train and its precious cargo been destroyed 
by fire! How mau}^ of the "lords of creation" would 
have been obliged to put their hands a little deeper into 
their pockets next Christmas if the heart of their better- 
half should be filled with love for a new seal skin ! But 
thanks to a providential decree that ordered otherwise, 
the calamity didn't happen. The train passed in safety 
and let us hope that its beloved cargo will survive the 
boisterous gales of the Atlantic and come back to us in the 
shape of that most beautiful of all the adorning apparel of 
woman — that warm, glossy, cosy, fascinatingly lovely, but 
awfulh' expensive, seal skin sack. 

We reached Crane Lake on September 20th. During 
our ride in the hunting car Yellowstone we had matured 
our plans for a big day's sport, and we got it. I saw more 

54 



sport in that one day — the 21st — than I eveusaw before in 
a month. To briefly sketch the exciting incidents of the 
day would, perhaps, prove interesting, as all mankind, 
particularly the Anglo-saxon part of it, has an instinctive 
interest, more or less keen, in everything that relates to 
hunting. 




ROAD ; SIGNS OF COMING 



There were four of us. We got up long before break 
of day as silently as we could, so as not to disturb the 
ladies of the party (for, mind you, there are five ladies 
journeying across the continent and back in the " Yellow- 
stone"). We got away about "5 o'clock in the morn- 
ing,' ' just as the geese were commencing to fly from the 
lake to the neighboring wheat fields. We were posted 
along a low ridge, with strict orders to lie down quiet and 
snug in some thorn bushes (to lie " quiet and snug " in a 
thorn bush requires practice). When a flock came near 

55 



we were to jump up, single out a goose and give him 
some No. i shot. 

The day was breaking in the East and shedding its 
faint gray light over the prairie. The dainty colors of the 
wild flowers, their pale yellows, their pinks and their 
purples were just becoming discernible in Nature's prairie 
panorama which was soon to spread itself and rapture us 
with its beauty. 

And now comes the cry of the wild goose : ' ' Honk ! 
Honk ! Honk ! ' ' Looking up we see a long line of them 
approaching high overhead. Crack ! go the guns and 
avvaj^ go the geese leaving none of their compan\- behind. 
Down we dodge again and another flock comes in sight. 
As before, another go of the guns and another go of 
the geese ; and thus flock after flock fly over us in their 
peculiar wedge-shape order, but all too high. However, 
we venture another crack at them. This time one is seen 
to drop down a little, recover himself, get back into the 
flock, drop again a few yards, and then, to our .surprise, 
tumble heels over head, striking the earth a quarter of a 
mile awa}'. A grain of buckshot did the work. 

The morning flight is over and only one goose is 
bagged. Now we munch a few apples and take the 
setter dogs and start for the gamy prairie chicken, 
which out here is really the pin-tailed grouse that goes 
before civilization, while the regular prairie hen follows 
civilization. The first bird that is flushed is taken by 
the youngest shot, my son James, boy of 15 years, and 
beautifully stopped. The second bird is similarly treated 
by the same gunner. The birds now are popping up all 
around, and we all get our share. 

56 



We go back to the car, have breakfast, and off we 
tramp to Crane Lake, about four miles away. Reaching 
the water, we find it literally covered in places with 
ducks, snipe, geese, yellow legs, pelicans, curlew and 
plover. A few shots started the whole aggregation in 
motion — mallards, plover and Wilson snipe begin to 
tumble until we are loaded with all we can carry. A 
gunner away off across the prairie is heard to fire two 
barrels, then to shout, jump, run, and throw his hands 
up. No one seemed to know what was disturbing him, 
but in a moment we see two dogs coming at a furious 
rate. No ; one is a coyote, the other is a dog in full 
chase. Four guns are discharged with No. 5 shot at the 
slinking coyote, bvit he gets out of danger in a few 
minutes. Then a monster bird comes flapping leisurely 
around the shore. It is a pelican, and, as if to tease us 
and waste our shells, he flaps serenely by in front of each 
gunner several times, each time getting the contents of 
shells from No. 5 down to buckshot. He is hit from 
every angle, some twenty-five shells in all having been 
fired at him. We could hear the shot strike and then 
drop into the water, and yet Mr. Pelican is still "winking 
the other e5'e" and will continue to wink it at anything 
less than a rifle. 

With our game belts loaded to their fullest capacity 
(mine must have weighed forty pounds, although it felt 
like a ton), we started back, killing more prairie chickens 
on the road, and arriving in time for dinner (5 o'clock), 
having been out just twelve hours. What exhilaration 
was crowded into those twelve hours ! One who has 
never been out in this rarified, highly electric atmo.sphere 

57 



cannot understand or appreciate the glories of such a 
hunt on such a day — the sun comfortably warm, with a 
cool wind waving the rich prairie grass and rippling the 
water so that it shone from the distance like burnished sil- 
ver. Along the edges of the sloughs which empty into the 
lake the green willows, stirred with the wind, were waving 
their graceful limbs, while the bright prairie flowers and 
the sage brush did their part toward making a pictiire 
hard to match and not easy to be forgotten. 

After dinner we had singing, whistling (by as good 
a whistler as ever "cocked a lip") and piano playing 
(two of the ladies being good musicians). When our 
concert was over and we were about retiring, a knock 
was heard at the car door, and the members of the only 
family residing within miles of the station were announced 
as callers. So again the strains of one of Beethoven's 
immortal sonatas and a nocturne of Chopin's were invoked 
to entertain the visitors, who were two ladies and a gen- 
tleman, the latter superintending a ranch of 10,000 acres. 
The latest fashions, the price of wheat (54 cents a bushel) 
the climate, the habits of the wild fowl around the lake, 
were discu-ssed. After a pleasant two hours' entertain- 
ment the visitors were shown to the car door, saying it 
was the pleasantest night they had ever spent in their 
lives, and so ended our day's hunt and pleasure at Crane 
Lake, Assinaboia Territory. 

For months there was no rain in the regions gunned 
over by our party and we pursued our sport without alloy 
or hindrance. When we were on the Frazer River, in 
Vancouver, six of our party who had started away on a 
hunt after caribou and bears, returned to the car on 

58 



Sunday, after a trip of seven days, during which time they 
rode 130 miles over an ahnost impenetrable country, and 
among the mountains some 4500 feet above tide level. 
For eight miles of that distance the road was so rough 
that horses could not be taken through, and the camp 
stuff had to be dragged and pitched over fallen timber, 
around rocks, under rocks and over rocks. One of the 
party claims this to be his twenty-second annual hunting 
trip, and he vows he never saw anything to equal it for 
roughness and difficulties. They bristled with every step. 
One caribou and three deer were shot, and as they 
couldn't drag their game out of the country after killing 
it, they gave up the hunt as a bad job and returned to 
the car, having taken three days to go up the mountains 
and two to return. 

Two of the hunters, Messrs. W. E. Harmon and J. 
G. Brewer, of Boston, had come out determined to get 
some big game, even if they had to go alone after it. 
They hired an Indian guide and a cook, got pack horses 
and provisions and again started out into the mountains 
where they proposed hunting big horn sheep up above 
the snow line. They made their way through from Can- 
adian territory into the United States, arriving at Spokane, 
Washington, a distance of 245 miles, camping up in the 
snow for several days, climbing around snow peaks in 
moccasins, but always trjnng to keep face to the wind. 
They finally succeeded in killing four mountain sheep 
and three deer, but the hardships and exposure they 
endured, as evidenced by their torn flesh and clothing, 
will keep them from trying it again for some time at least. 
As years glide by and civilization approaches nearer and 

59 



nearer to the great mountain ranges, the big horns and 
wild goats of the snow-covered peaks are pushed farther 
and farther back, so that it will not be long before these 
nimble-footed and beautiful creatures will follow the fate 
of the buffalo. 

At Sicamous, a town of about one hundred people, 
on the main line of the C. P. R. in British Columbia, 
lives Colonel Forester, who was in China when the great 
rebellion broke out in which General Gordon won his 
fame. Colonel Forester was requested by the foreign 
merchants in China to organize and drill what forces 
could be hastily gathered up, and to take charge of the 
defense, vvhich he did so successfully that he was offered 
supreme command of the forces operating against the 
rebels. He declined, however, in favor of General Gor- 
don. He has a large number of decorations, presents and 
letters testifying to his braver}- and executive ability, and 
is quietly and modestly living out the remnant of his days 
in this lonel}^ hamlet. 

The scener}^ along the Frazer River is of the wildest, 
most interesting and most startling character. Fabulous 
amounts of money were spent in the construction of this 
part of the Canadian Pacific Railway. For a great dis- 
tance it is a succession of tunnels, trestles, bridges and 
deep rock cuttings, the line clinging to the bald sides of 
the mountains and overlooking the Frazer River that 
rushes along seething and foaming, and in some places a 
thousand feet below. On the opposite side is the old 
government road, which was made necessarj^ years ago 
by reason of the gold excitement on this river, and also 
to facilitate the valuable salmon fishing. The road is 

60 



now rapidly going to ruin. We passed thousands of 
frames of fishing tents left standing by their Indian own- 
ers. Wherever the river narrowed to a gorge, there they 
could be seen in the most inaccessible positions and fixed 
on the rocks like so many barnacles. How the Indians 
nianao;ed to get there and stav there is hard to imagine. 







ALLEGASH RIVER, HEAD WATERS OF RIVER ST. JOHN, CANADA. 

The town of Vancouver is experiencing a real estate 
fever of a very acute and inflammatory character. This 
is all owing to its being the terminus of the Canadian 
Pacific and also of the magnificent line of steamers run- 
ning to China and Japan. The town has a population of 
about 15,000, is situated on a fine bay, with a rich min- 
eral, lumber and agricultural countrj- tributary to it. The 
grit and enterprise displayed there is such that even Phil- 
adelphia might copy with advantage. The Northern 
Pacific Railroad wants to have an entrance there in order 
to reap a share in the rich Oriental trade pouring through 



the town from the great steamers plying to Japan. What 
did this little town of 15,000 people do to encourage the 
designs of the railway people ? The}^ put the question to 
popular vote, and the result was that they decided to give 
the railroad $300,000 as a bonus to enter the town. 

Think of it, you Philadelphia Councilmen ; you, who 
voted so often and worked so hard to keep the Baltimore 
and Ohio out of the city ; you who kept the Philadelphia 
and Reading bowing and scraping before your committees 
for years ; you who kept the Belt Line so long out in the 
cold, and you who fought so long and fierceh' against 
elevated railroads in our "Traction" ridden city. Ah, 
there are some profitable lessons that ma}" be learned 
by getting away from home, and probably there is none 
that needs a lesson of that sort more than the average 
Philadelphia Councilman. Let us hope and trust, how- 
ever, that the Quaker city has got through with her nap 
and that her eyes are open wide enough to see that when 
railroads knock at her doors for admission they should be 
welcomed not repelled. 

We arrived at Morley, Alberta, September 25th. 
The town consists of one store, three dwellings and the 
railroad station, having a total population of about 
twent}'. It is of importance by reason of its being the 
distributing point for the reservation of the tribe of 
Stoney Indians. Large herds of cattle are pastured there 
by the Canadian Government to provide a weekh' supply 
of meat during the year for the Indians, and the 
annual payment of five dollars per head is made and 
blankets distributed in accordance with the treaty stip- 
ulations. 



The Indians are settled along the valle_v of the Bow 
River, some in tepees, but most of them in substantial and 
well-built log houses, each family having a small cul- 
tivated patch of ground on which they raise potatoes, 
cabbage and other vegetables, while their ponies are hob- 
bled near by and their cattle range the prairie. They 
seem to spend a happy, contented life, altogether different 
from the non-treaty Indians, whose bad traits I observed so 
markedly in Maple Creek, and whose good qualities were 
not to be discovered with the naked eye. I talked with 
a number of those who spoke English, and spoke it quite 
as well as the majority of white men. They had traveled 
some, could read and write, treated their wives and fam- 
ilies with consideration, and, moreover, had accumulated 
a little wealth outside of the Government allowance. 

One Indian told me that he had not seen his father 
since he was a boy, until this summer, when his father 
wrote him a letter asking him to visit him at a point a 
long distance still further north. He took a team of 
horses and drove there, the round trip occupying two 
weeks of traveling. He spent one week with his parents, 
and spoke of them very affectionately and dutifully. 

The Stoney tribe speak the ' ' Cree ' ' language and 
belong to that race of brave fighters. A Mr. McDougal, 
who resides near Morley, has translated the Bible and the 
new Testament (as well as a book of hymns ) into the Cree 
characters (which are said to be very simple and easily 
learned), and he preaches to them and instructs them in 
their own tongue. He is a wealthy rancher, one of the 
oldest residents and has seen the prairies when they 
teemed with roaming herds of buffalo, elk, antelope and 

63 



deer. His house contains more stuffed specimens of 
' ' animated nature' ' than an}^ other in this territory. 

Some years since an enthusiastic young woman came 
out here as a missionary from Massachusetts. She was 
very successful in her work, and among her converts was 
a "noble Indian." whom she induced to go to college, 
where he studied faithfully and well, and on graduating 
was ordained to the ministry. He went back to Morley, 
made love to the j^oung missionar}'-, was accepted and 
married her. They are happy, and, while the wife's fam- 
ily is said to have ostracised her, she seems to be satisfied. 

Thirteen of our party, including four ladies, started 
on a chicken hunt to a point some twelve miles from this 
place. x\s the Indians indulge in shooting chickens from 
the saddles of their ponies, and thus depleting their 
numbers, it was necessary to take teams and drive this 
distance before we found the birds which even then were 
in only limited numbers and as wild as hares. When we 
arriv^ed on the shooting ground it was nearly noon, and 
as the birds had finished their morning feeding and were 
found on the edge of the brush fringing a little stream, 
we had hard work getting more than a glimpse of them 
before they would be out of sight. Taking long flights 
made it slow shooting. However, we made a fairly good 
bag, and, as it is always the practice of this party of 
sportsmen and sportswomen to shoot only what they can 
use to advantage, we gave up the sport and the hard work 
in good season and enjoyed a glorious ride back, watch- 
ing the forms and ever-changing shadows of the Rocky 
Mountains, which, though eighteen miles distant, seemed 
close enough to be reached in a half-hour's walk. 

64 



We were told that at Bow River all we had to do was 
to throw in our fish lines, and with any sort of a fly we 
could catch all the speckled trout we could handle, and 
that Morley was the point on the Bow which gave the 
best results; but — how often these "buts" come in to 
upset trout-fishing calculations, and this particular "but" 
did it effectually — a roadniaster on the Canadian Pacific 
had been drowned in the treacherous current and the 
authorities, hoping to bring his body to the surface, 
exploded dynamite in all the pools up and down the 
river for five miles. These explosions, though they did 

not raise the body, certainly did raise the d 1 with the 

fish, killing nearly all of them. And thus, once more our 
fond hopes and fancy of hauling in the speckled beauties 
on our seven-ounce rods were scattered to the winds. 
After a whole day's throwing and coaxing with all sorts 
of flies, minnows and bait we succeeded in landing only a 
paltry dozen or so. 

Ten persons having lost their lives in the river near 
here within a few months, the ranchers, cowboys and even 
the Indians hold it very much in awe. The water is icy 
cold, from the melting snow and ice rushing down from 
the Rock}^ Mountains; the current is swift, full of eddies, 
rapids and whirlpools ; and the stone on the bottom slip- 
pery as an eel. Woe betide the man who should lose his 
footing in fording or get over head in it in any shape ; his 
chances of getting out would be slim indeed. 

We arrived in Banff early in the morning and slipped 
out before breakfast to see the town and spy out the 
points of attraction which the Canadian Pacific has set 
such store by. The town is nil — nein — nix. A few log 

65 



huts, a small brick church, a dozen or more frame shanty 
stores and stumps and fallen trees galore. 

But the attractions are there, and they are attractions, 
too, with no nonsense about them. "Whatever the com- 
pany has advertised to perform, that it will perform, or 
your money refunded," would apply very well. The 
luxurious C. P. R. R. Hotel, about two miles from the 
station, newly built, superbly furnished and lighted, 
spacious, comfortable and well kept, is a "number one " 
drawing card. A sanitarium, a few pretty, small hotels, 
glorious drives among glorious mountains, capped with 
everlasting snow, a park, twenty -six miles long by ten 
miles wide, embracing parts of the Bow, Spray and Cas- 
cade Rivers; the Hot Sulphur Springs, the Warm Sul- 
phur Springs, bridle paths and walks up the various 
peaks and the unrivaled landscape all aglow with the 
brilliant tints of its autumn foliage, make a combination 
of attractions that has already proved strong enough to 
draw tourists from all parts of this Continent and a great 
many from Europe as well — a fact that the register at the 
big hotel fully attests. 

My choice in this list of attractions was to take a 
warm sulphur bath and then scale a mountain. Now 
isn't it unique to take a bath in an enclosure open at the 
top, where the white caps of the mountains are seen all 
around you and the rain pouring in ? And yet we are 
swimming in a pool of sulphur water at the natural tem- 
perature of ninety degrees, and with plenty of room for 
diving, fancy swimming and frolics generally. 

The mountain climb was equally worthj^ of remem- 
brance. I wasn't at all ambitious of "going" for one of 

66 



the 6000 foot giants. I selected a modest 1200 foot fellow 
called Tunnel Mountain, and in face of fierce winds and 
gusts of rain (which on the higher peaks fell in the form 
of snow) I scaled it in about an hour and a half. The 
view from the top was as enchanting and ravishing as 
mortal eye ever rested on. Neither poet nor painter 
could even faintly describe or picture it. Why should 
I then, who have not the gift of either, attempt to do 
what cannot be done? Suffice it to say, it is imprinted 
on my memory and likely to stay there. 




ONE OF OUR CAMPS. 



Coming down , like numerous other would-be smart 
ones, I thought it an easy matter to leave the carefully 
graded path and by traveling straight down save time and 
distance. Very soon my feet slipped from under me ; 
down on my back I slid, grasping at shrubs, stones and 
plants in my rapid descent, which kept up until its 

67 



unpleasant speed was stopped by running into a tree. 
With scratched hands, torn pants, a bruised back and a 
little more wisdom, I concluded to keep to the path for 
the remainder of the distance. 

Did it ever strike 3'ou how many difficulties there are 
to be encountered, the distances to be covered and the 
obstacles to be surmounted in the search after speckled 
trout ? It struck us, but not until after we had tried it. 
We had so many promises of good trout fishing on this 
trip, with so many disappointments, that when we reached 
Banff and found that, although there was anj' quantity of 
trout there, it was close season in the park, and we 
couldn't fish we were about giving up all idea of ever 
seeing one. Just then we stumbled over a fellow who 
told us of a wonderful little lake, recently discovered and 
only fished in for the first time two months ago, at Castle 
Mountain, seventeen miles from Banff. 

On the promise that it was full of trout and notwith- 
standing the warning that he doubted whether we could 
rough it enough to get there, we determined to go and 
find out whether he was a fish romancer or not. Our car 
was pulled there in the early morning. A guide had 
come with us from Banff, who filled us with bouncing 
predictions of the luck we were going to have but kept 
very dark about the difficulties and dangers of the trip. 
Seven of us started with him, unconscious of what was 
before us. He had led us along a small creek to a frail 
crossing on a slippery fallen tree, over which one man 
promptly tumbled and had to start back for dry clothes. 
We then came to the Bow River, which here is a 
raging torrent, deep and treacherous. Stretched across 

68 



diagonally was a very long boom, made by strapping a 
string of two logs together and held to the shore by stout 
wire cables. It is the only crossing this side of Banff, 
seventeen miles away. On account of the fierce rush of 
waters this string of logs was swaying up and down, with 
the boiling water surging over them here and there, the 
inner log half covered with slimy, rotten bark, that peeled 
and slipped off iinder foot. 

The guide had on shoes with sharp-pointed spikes, 
which enabled him to skip across the logs with the ease 
and grace of a dancing master ; we had on rubber boots, 
slippery as glass. There were two logs reaching to the 
boom and over these the guide, seeing we were not in his 
' ' skipping ' ' condition advised us to creep on our hands 
and knees. 

Four of us started across with our feet placed cross- 
wise of the logs. On getting about a third of the waj' 
over the guide halloed at the top of his voice : ' ' Look 
out you don't slip over; if you do, hang on to the logs 
like grim death or you're a goner ! No man can swim in 
this water ; he'd be sucked under and into Davy Jones' 
locker 'fore he could say Jack Robinson !" 

This cheerful bit of information had the effect of 
making us doubly cautious. By dint of balancing and 
poising, and feeling with our feet for the least slimy 
places we at last got safely over. We then had time to 
realize what idiotic fools we had been to risk our lives on 
such a crossing, and, for what? — a few trout. 

We motioned to the three men we left on the other 
side not to attempt the passage. They signaled " all 
right," and we started ahead. Afterwards one of the 

69 



three made up his mind to try it. He labored along very 
cautiously until near the middle, then over he went into 
the deep and icy stream. Fortunately for him, he fell on 
the inside. He was a strong, athletic young man, and 
managed to throw an arm around the inside log before his 
body could be sucked under, and by an almost super- 
human effort pulled himself on to the boom again. Hav- 
ing got back safely he went to the car for a change of 
clothes. To-day he is full of thanks to Providence for 
his narrow escape, and well he may be, for his chance of 
life in that cauldron of ice water was — well, one in a 
hundred. 




CASTING FOR TROUT IN A FAMOUS POOL. 



Shortly after leaving the river we struck a good trail 
up a mountain side. It ended at an almost impenetrable 
jungle of fire-swept timber, over, under and around which 
we panted, perspired and labored for an hour; then sud- 

70 



denly, as if by magic, there flashed upon our sight the 
loveliest little gem of a lake imaginable, circled around 
by great mountains, with snow reaching nearly down to 
the water. We at once jointed our rods, and tried "first 
and last" live grasshoppers, of which we had plenty. 
Hardly had I struck my line into the water when a 
speckled beauty took the hook, and then another and 
another, and for a couple of hours it was nothing but a 
swish of the line and a battle with the trout. 

Soon we had as many as we could carry. Mean- 
while, the other three who were left, had, with the assist- 
ance of the guide, who had returned to help them, resur- 
rected an old scow and crossed. About two o'clock they 
appeared with a welcome lunch. The car log book of 
game credits the party with a catch of some three hun- 
dred and fifty speckled trout, certainly enough to last us 
a few days, as we have them carefully packed away in 
the refrigerator. 

Next morning our car was coupled to the Pacific 
express and hauled to that wonderful spot, the great 
"Selkirk Glacier." An excursion was promptly made to 
the glacier, which is said to be seven miles long, two 
miles broad and 2000 feet thick, of solid ice. A fine 
object lesson is here obtained of the resistless power of the 
ice in crushing, powdering and moving enormous masses 
of rocks. Avalanches, landslides and terrific storms are 
of such frequent occurence during the winter and spring 
that the occupants of the railroad hotel and station are in 
daily terror of their lives. 

Early this morning a couple of our sportsmen, armed 
with rifles, started away from the car hoping to get a 



sight of a bear. Six of them — two grizzlies and one black 
bear, each with a cub — were reported to be feeding on 
berries less than a quarter of a mile away from the station. 
In a very few minutes three shots were heard, then five 
in rapid succession, then one shot, and we divined that a 
bear had surely fallen. Excitement ran high and all were 
on tip-toe of expectation, until two hunters returned — 
without the bear. 

It took some time for the truth to gleam through the 
glamour surrounding that early morning encounter with 
bruin, and here it is. A railwa}" employee had located 
the bears and at daylight crept down among the berry 
bushes where they were expected to feed, and patiently 
waited with the determination of bringing one down. 
The track here makes a sharply defined horse shoe curve, 
and on one arm of this curve is a snow shed a mile long. 
One of our hunters had climbed on top of this shed and 
walked along for half its length when he saw a bear come 
out in an open patch seven hundred yards away. Now, 
he couldn't get off the shed without going to the end of 
it and by doing this he feared he might lose sight of the 
bear. So to lose no time he commenced firing. 

The other hunter saw with his glass a man down in 
the berry patch and thought hunter number one was 
shooting at him. The man in the berry patch seemed to 
think so too, and after his ears had listened to the close 
whistle of seven or eight bttllets he emerged from the 
bushes and walking up to hunter number one opened up 
on him a battery of Western w^ords that fairly smoked 
with brimstone. I'll omit them here, only saying that 
they conveyed the idea that the bullets had nearly hit 



him. ' ' Besides, ' ' he said, ' ' how the devil do you expect 
to shoot bears from the top of a snow shed three quarters 
of a mile away ?" 

It took lots of oily words to smooth out the berry 
man's waves of indignation. After warning hunter num- 
ber one that if he valued the integrity of his own hide he 
had better not try that sort of fun again, but keep his 
bullets in their pouch, where they evidently belonged, 
he finally agreed to an armistice and a drink of whiskey. 

Number two had in the meantime followed the bear 
away down the river but lost the trail and dejectedly 
returned, adding his opinion to that of the berry bush 
man : ' ' The idea of a fellow trying to shoot a bear from 
the top of a snow shed and across a whole county ! ' ' 

And now we come to Lake Okanagan to try our 
guns on the wild geese and ducks. 

By the way, like the immortal Mrs. O'Brien, who, 
when she had acquired wealth and position in society in- 
sisted upon calling herself Mrs. O'Brion. with the accent 
on the last syllable, Lake Okanagan is not Okanagan at all, 
but is pronounced Okanawgan, accent on the third sylla- 
ble. It is named after a tribe of Indians (a branch of the 
Chinook race). It is about eighty miles long and from 
two to twelve miles in breadth, well filled with silver 
trout, salmon trout, chub and lake trout. The growing 
town of Vernon, with a present population of about four 
hundred, is five miles from it. The lake is bordered by 
a remarkably fine piece of ranching and agricultural 
country, and on account of its manifold attractions — the 
depth and coldness of its waters, the beauty of the 



scenery, the wealth of wild fowl and its wonderful 
climate — it is destined to become a prominent summer 
resort for residents of the Pacific coast near Vancouver 
and Victoria. 

The lake and the town of Vernon are reached by a 
branch of the Canadian Pacific Railroad fifty-one miles 
long. This branch, though in operation but a short time 
(it was opened on the twenty-fifth of last June) is said to 
be already paying handsomely. Previous to the building 
of the C. P. R. R. main line all merchandise had to be 
transported on pack horses a distance of two hundred and 
fifty miles from Fort Hope, on the Frazer River. The 
item of freight was then a very serious one, as it amounted 
to eleven cents per pound on sugar, nails, hardware, 
coffee and all heavy articles, and a proportionately higher 
rate on more bulky merchandise. It must be from this 
reason then, that, although the railroad has been opened 
over three months and the freight charges are very mod- 
erate, the merchants have not got used to the changed 
condition of affairs. 

Everything is absurdly high. You are charged 
twenty-five cents for a shave, fifty cents for a pint bottle 
of apollinaris or Bass' ale, and corresponding prices for 
everything else. But the livery stable men are the real 
Shylocks of the town. A physician was dilating upon the 
qualities of a very good young mare he had just bought 
for ten dollars, and assured me he could buy any number 
of them at that price. I thought, as horse flesh was so 
cheap, I should be able to enjoy many drives and see the 
country without injuring my pocket. The thought was 
hardly a sound one. At my first trial of it, the stable 

74 



man charged me five dollars for a very sorry looking 
horse and a dilapidated buggy whose years might have 
equaled those of the "Deacon's one horse shay." The 
charge for a pair of similar looking animals and a similar 
looking wagon I found to be ten dollars. Such modesty 
is rare. 

We have been here a week, and, while there are 
three livery stables, all doing a rushing trade, we have 

never been able to 
see the proprietor 
of one of them to 
know whether the 
charges exacted 
from us are war- 
ranted or not, as 
each of them seems 
to be more inter- 
ested in shooting 
or horse racing than in looking after his business. 

This is truly a wonderful belt of country, the most 
fertile we have yet seen. The presbyterian minister here 
(lately preaching at Rutledge, Pa.) tells us that the soil 
in places is fully fifteen feet deep and of the richest black 
loam. The wheat averages over thirty bushels to the 
acre and weighs sixty-five to sixty-six pounds to the 
bushel. They make no rotation in planting. It is wheat 
and wheat year after year. We saw a field just harvested 
that produced thirty-two bushels to the acre which had 
been sown with wheat for twenty-three consecutive years, 
and another field of forty acres that last year had not been 
sown, but simply ploughed under, with the previous 




PULLING THE CANOE OVER SHALLOW WATER. 



year's stubble on it, that netted its owner (a half-breed 
Indian) $700. Fruits, hops and vegetables are equally 
prolific. 

The climate is dr}', with hot days, cold nights and 
few sudden changes. Even now the days are as hot as in 
July and the nights cold enough for November. The 
only doctor in the neighborhood says he never saw nor 
did he ever read of such a healthy district. Children 
don't get sick. People eat well, sleep well and live long, 
and the only business on which a doctor can earn his 
living comes from accidents or from practice incidental to 
the natural increase in the population. 

The Earl of Aberdeen, Governor-General of Canada, 
has a ranch four miles from here, which is managed by his 
brother-in-law, the Hon. Major Majoribanks. He also 
has another ranch of several thousand acres at Mission, a 
settlement at the other end of Lake Okanagan. His lord- 
ship owns almost countless herds of cattle and sheep and 
droves of horses and pigs. A couple of young men, rela- 
tives of the Duke of Argyle, are now here shooting. 
So, between the noble Earl's adherents and his Grace 
the Duke's relatives, the little town is full of fuss and 
feathers. It's "Me Lud " this and his "Grace the 
Duke" that on every side. The Earl's lower ranch, at 
Mission, is to be irrigated and rented out in plots of 
twenty acres or more to fruit farmers, for which it is said 
to be peculiarly adapted. 

Four of us have been having good sport during the 
past week, shooting prairie chickens, ruffled grouse and 
wild geese. A little lake four miles away is almost cov- 
ered during daytime with the geese and ducks. The 

76 



geese leave the lake every morning and evening to feed 
on the stubble left standing in the wheat fields, and on 
their passage to and fro comes the only chance to shoot 
them. On arriving here the chief hunter now left with 
our car, Mr. A. B. F. Kinney, of Worcester, Mass., 
selected favorable locations for sinking pits to shoot from, 
and we all went to work digging with spades and a rail- 
road crowbar. After the ploughed surface was removed 
the earth was found to be almost solid black loam, which 
reached down as far as we went, nearly five feet, and 
awfully hard digging it was, as our blistered hands gave 
proof. When the pits were dug a couple of dozen sheet- 
iron decoy geese were set out; then we covered the 
edges of the pits with wheat straw, hiding every lump 
of fresh-turned earth, so that nothing could be seen 
which would excite the suspicion of the geese. We 
had scarcely finished our task when we heard their first 
"honk! honk!" Down into the pits we tumbled like 
gophers, and crouching together with scarcely breathing 
room, we saw flock after flock sail over without giving 
much attention to our painted sham geese. Then another 
flock came which had more curiosity. To and fro they 
sailed by us, circling around to find out if things were 
"on the square," each circle bringing them lower and 
lower until we were satisfied they were within gunshot. 
Then up we jumped and blazed away. And the geese 
— well, nothing seemed to have happened to them, they 
flew off apparently untouched, but only apparently; we 
saw one of them lag behind, then drop a little, then rise 
to the flock, and in a second or two tumble headlong a 
quarter of a mile away. Another faltered and fell a half 

77 



a mile awa3^ We found the first with the aid of a dog, 
hidden in a bunch of grass ; the other, for which we 
searched in vain, was found by a cowboy two days after. 

Thus early in the morning and evening we have been 
in the pits enjoying this most exciting sport, and have 
bagged enough geese to supply us with all we can use, 
and an occasional one to give away. At this season of 
the year they are fat and delicious eating. 

Six gentlemen of our party started on Monda}- of last 
week on a "big game hunt" into the district of the Gold 
range of mountains abounding in caribou, grizzly and 
black bear, Rocky Mountain goats and mountain sheep. 
They took with them three Indian guides, a white cook 
and a squaw to cook for the guides. As their camp outfit 
had to be carried on pack horses sixty -five miles, when 
they started off they made a very respectable cavalcade. 
The roads, as well as the hunting ground, are said to be 
of the roughest description, so whatever game they 
bring back they will surely earn, particularly when it is 
said that before leaving they were compelled to take out 
a license to shoot deer, costing $50 each. As far as we 
can learn this license or tax is only levied on Americans 
(Yankees we are called here) while Englishmen, French- 
men or men of any other nationalitj' are never required to 
take out a license. If this be really so, it is only another 
proof of Canada's vexatious and nagging policy towards 
her big and wealthy neighbor. It also proves how short- 
sighted they are, as such a policy wall never bring recip- 
rocity, which all Canadians sigh for, but retaliation, which 
they can ill afford, and which is as unseemly among 
nations as it is amone; men. 



While in the ticket office at Vancouver, British 
Columbia, we were much amused at a party of three 
Englishmen belonging to the nobility of England, who 
were trying to engage a compartment on one of the 
C. P. R. R.'s first-class cars. They couldn't "you 
know" travel in a car with ordinary people; but the 
ticket man assured them there was nothing else for them 
to do, as there were no compartments, and the company 
could not arrange one before the train started, no matter 
how important it might be to them. 

They agreed to pay an extra fare if the smoking end 
of the car could be reserved for them and they authorized 
the conductor to tell the passengers that they were cholera 
suspects or small-pox patients or anything he liked in 
order to keep the "common people" away from them. 
But all to no purpose. There was but one alternative — 
take their "medicine" or stay behind. 

It was somewhat amusing to hear their criticisms on 
Uncle Sam's "frightfully vulga' country and beastly 
traveling don't you know." 

The route from Vancouver, in British Columbia, to 
Seattle, Wash., lies through a rough, heavily timbered 
district, where the trees measure anywhere from three 
feet to six feet in diameter. These are of the red cedar 
variety and are being rapidly sawed down and cut into 
lumber and shingles. 

Why it is I cannot tell, but it certainly is neverthe- 
less — I mean that the railway is literally lined with a row 
of bursted booming towns; each with a bladder-like 
name, a big hotel, a public hall, maybe, and lots of 
saloons flaring suggestive signs, such as the "Blazing 



Stump Saloon," "New Idea Saloon," "Three of a Kind 
Saloon," " Let her go Gallagher Saloon," etc., etc. 

Convincing evidence of "bustedness" looms up every- 
where. Streets deserted, dwellings vacated and closed, 
and no visible sign of life, except it be the shingle mills 
and the woodchoppers' shanties that lie on the outskirts 
and away from the "avenues" and "boulevards" that 
grace these silent towns. 




A CAMP WITH COOK-HOUSE TO THE 



DINING TABLE TO THE RIGHT. 



A dealer in real estate in Seattle told us that the 
growth of that town had been very much curtailed b}^ 
heavy investments in those mushroom growths which 
offer little or no chance of any returns. Seattle and 
Tacoma are less than forty miles apart, and as both are 
ambitious, growing towns, there is necessarily great busi- 
ness rivalry and bitter jealousy. Each city claims the 
largest population, business and wealth ; each claims the 



brightest prospects for the future, and each also delights 
to decry the boasted advantages of the other. Our 
candid and unprejudiced opinion is that Seattle is by all 
odds the most enterprising and promising of the two. 
Certainly there is much more life there than in Tacoma, 
and more public spirit. 

Tacoma seems to have been nursed and coddled so 
much by the Northern Pacific that, in a measure, she has 
lost her independence. On the other hand Seattle has 
had to scratch and fight for her railroad favors, and 
fought so well that she has fairly compelled the Northern 
Pacific to come off its "Tacoma perch" and hustle for 
its share of the trade. The Great Northern Railway is 
expected to be opened to Seattle in a few months, and 
then the difference will be still more marked. 

We have been enjoying the luxury of trolling for 
salmon in Puget Sound, both at Seattle and Tacoma, 
with fairly good success, as all our party save one (and 
he was the professional ' ' lone fisherman ' ' of the party) 
caught one or more salmon. While the sport was very 
exciting, I confess I was disappointed at the tame fight 
they make when hooked. There is a good deal more 
fight and fun in a four pound bass than you can get out 
of a sixteen pound salmon. But they are beauties; and 
when you have them safely landed and lying in the 
bottom of the boat, they are certainly a " joy forever." 
Our fifteen-year-old sportsman was not to be outdone 
by the older hands, for he not only hooked and landed 
his salmon, but he also landed a trout with the trolling 
line and spoon, a feat which none of us had ever heard 
of before. 



It is needless to say that the catching and canning of 
the salmon is a very large and profitable industry. The 
number of people dependent upon his ' ' iridescent high- 
ness," the lordly salmon, for a living and the number 
too, in all civilized portions of the globe, who find eco- 
nomical and delicious nourishment in his red and juicy 
steaks, would be beyond the ken of man to tell. Yet it 
is safe to say that no one product of our Western Hemis- 
phere serves to advertise and popularize the country more 
than the canned salmon. Millions of tins are annually 
shipped east or exported to Europe and sold at such 
prices that ' ' canned salmon ' ' is now rightly considered 
the handiest, the cheapest, and the most nutritious 
cooked food of the century. 




82 



NORTH DAKOTA. 

A sportsman's paradise, in truth, is this 
Where nothing mars or meddles with his bliss ; 
Nimrod himself might envy such a spot, 
Nor find his game unworthy of his shot. 

— IV/iilloti. 

f-N OUBTLESS, North Dakota is the "paradise of 

I I the sportsman " but I am not so sure it contains 

1/ nothing to " meddle with his bUss." Indeed I 

have strong evidence to the contrary which I will spread 

before the reader a little further on. 

We wound up our excursion in a blaze of magnificent 
sport at Dawson, in this state. The proximity of the 
place to enormous wheatfields and innumerable sloughs, 
ponds and lakes causes all kinds of aquatic game birds to 
congregate here and in the greatest abundance. All the 
duck tribe, including the red head, the mallard, the 
widgeon, teal, black, and bald pate; the Canadian gray 
goose, the beautiful white goose, sandhill cranes, and the 
plump, solid- meated prairie chicken, all these are here 
and many others, awaiting the pleasure of the sportsmen. 
The latter come from all parts of the country— but par- 
ticularly from St. Paul and Chicago— with their lo-bores 
and i2-bores, their retrieving spaniels and their Irish 
setters. 

83 



The town hasn't over two hundred inhabitants, but 
it boasts of a large hotel, which is now reaping its 
harvest from the pockets of the lots of men who know 
how to shoot as well as the lots that don't. 

The migrator)^ wild fowl are now making their way- 
down from the far North in countless multitudes, feeding 
on the wheat fields and ponds in the early morning and 
late evening, and resting in the centre of some lake large 
enough to keep them from out the reach of the deadly 
breech-loader during the day. 

The flights of geese are something wonderful, and it 
is more wonderful still that so very few of them are shot. 
There is no more wary or suspicious bird than the Canada 
goose. They will not settle anywhere without first care- 
fully looking the ground over. From the height at which 
they fly and in the rarefied atmosphere of the prairies they 
can see for miles, and they carefully avoid any moving 
object, particularly if it be that of the human form. 

We had spent several days there before we were able 
to discover the fields they were feeding on. When we did 
find the place it was literally sprinkled with their droppings 
and breast feathers. We selected a suitable spot, dug two 
luxurious pits, fixed the edges up with wheat stubble as 
carefully as possible, set our decoys and jumped in to 
await the coming of the "honkers." We had been in 
the pits only a few minutes when we saw away ofi" on the 
prairie what appeared to be a man with a dog. The man 
seemed demented, jumping and running around, and lying 
down on his back, then jumping up again and repeating 
his operations in the most eccentric manner. We held a 
whispered consultation from pit to pit as to what was best 

H 



to be done. It was folly to think that the geese would 
come down from the clouds for the purpose of getting a 
closer view of his capers. Oh no, we knew they were 
not such geese as that ; so it was decided that I should 
be the Ambassador Plenipo with full power to coax, drive, 
persuade or kick the funny intruder off the prairie. 
When I reached him I found, not a man, but a stubby, 
little, barefooted German boy, whose feet were sore from 
walking over the sharp-pointed wheat stubble. Hence 
his tears, I thought, for he was crying. But I was mis- 
taken. His grief was not of the sore-footed sort. He 
was only a " little Bo-Peep ' ' of the prairie variet}', and he 
had lost his sheep and didn't know where to find 'em. 

With more ingenuity than veracity, and a very ragged 
attempt to handle his mother-tongue, I told him when 
and where I had seen them and if he would only hurry 
away in the direction which I pointed out he would soon 
overtake their tails. 

Watching him till well out of sight and pluming 
myself on my diplomacy I returned to the pit. I had 
been there but a short time, when the screaming and 
"honking" of the first flight was heard, and peeping over 
the edges of the pit I saw a great moving cloud coming 
straight for us. But, horrible to relate, there was some- 
thing else coming, and something that promised to 
"meddle with our bliss" most effectually. An old black 
horse with a girl on his back wabbled towards us and 
getting near enough the girl stopped and yelled at the top 
of her voice : " Where did ye say ye see my she-e-e-p ?" 
"Oh, for Heaven's sake," I said, "get out of this! 
Move on ! Don't 5'ou see you're knocking our .sport 

85 



into smithereens ?" But she didn't or couldn't or wouldn't 
see, until one of our men threatened to put a charge of 
shot into the old horse unless she hurried him out of the 
way. The threat seemed to improve her eyesight, for at 
once she commenced whipping up old " Rosinante " and 
in a little while both had disappeared in the distance. 
And so had the geese. The flock on seeing her had 
swerved by us a quarter of a mile away, and nothing now 
could be done but wait for the next and largest flight, 
which in fifteen minutes we heard coming toward us, 
fully a couple of miles off". We had just time to ask our- 
selves whether there was going to be au}^ further meddling 
with our bliss when the answer showed up for itself. 
This time it was in the shape of a woman, evidently 
Bo-peep's mother, accompanied by the rider of the black 
horse. The girl had ridden home, told her mother we 
had threatened to shoot her, and now the old lady was 
here, with the martial fires of her fatherland burning 
fiercely within her and herb)lood up to the boiling point. 
When she got within shouting distance she opened her 
batteries. She would listen to neither explanation nor 
defence, and actually charged us with having frightened 
her sheep away by having a retriever with us, and vowed 
vengeance. We entreated her, implored her to leave us, 
to go away, anywhere, so the geese wouldn't see her; 
that after they had passed she might come back again and 
we would try to accommodate her with all the ven- 
geance she wanted. But no, there she stood, working 
her jaws and hurling her brimstone at us, and waving 
her arms that flew around her head like the sails of a 
windmill. 

86 



The geese passed over and away out of range and 
sight. Then her arms resumed their equilibrium, and 
with a few more hot words and a farewell shake of her 
fist she turned and slowly disappeared over a knoll. 
And we? Well, we got out of our pits and with spade 
and shovel silently filled them up again; then, hardly 
daring to trust ourselves to speak, we got into the wagon 
and drove to the train, for this was our last hunt for the 
season of 1892. 



87 



BRANT SHOOTING. 

This sport, well carried, shall he chronicled. 

— ifidsziinmer-Ntgki's Dream. 

30 let me chronicle the story of a week's sport — 
" well carried, " I think — on Monomo}' Island, 
Cape Cod, Mass. A week of atmospheric somer- 
siults; a week of rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder with 
vivid lightning, and extreme cold. And yet in spite of 
the exposure — twice a day wading a thousand j^ards to 
our shooting boxes, (guided by stakes a hundred yards 
apart, while we couldn't see from one to the other through 
the fog or sleeting snow) sitting in the box, at times over 
our knees in water, the waves dashing over it and slap- 
ping down the back of our neck, with the thermometer 
hugging close to the freezing point — I say, despite all 
this, it was a week that will be fondly fastened in ni}- 
memory ; a week full of adventure and novelt}' ; any 
quantity of ozone ; plenty of superbly prepared sea food 
for sustenance, and a superbly prepared appetite and 
digestion to handle it. It was also a week of total blank 
so far as any news of the outside world was concerned. 
No letters, no newspapers, no telegrams to side-track our 
attention or upset our equanimity. For once, business 



and the shop might go to the — well, "Hades. ' ' Song, story 
and jest held high carnival. Dull care was banished and 
his woeful face never permitted to enter the portals of the 
old club house so long as we held possession. For one 
week at least he was a stranger, a melancholy tramp, 
jobless and with no abiding place on the sands of 
Monomoy Island or the waters thereof. 

"Hello! there's branters, " said a native of Cape 
Cod, as we left the little mixed freight and passenger 
train at Chatham, Mass., on the morning of April 4th. 
"There be nine on 'em," he said, counting our noses by 
mental arithmetic ; and he was right. There were nine 
of us, with guns, woolen clothes, rubber clothes, canvas 
clothes, oil clothes, with leather boots, rubber boots, 
rubber hats, with crates of onions, boxes of loaded shells, 
cases of canned goods, mysterious looking "stun jugs" 
and ' ' sich . ' ' 

Nine of us from Boston, Worcester, Quincy, Dor- 
chester, Florida and Philadelphia, all drawni together by 
the Freemasonry of sport, and the shibboleth was 
"Brant." The day before I left Philadelphia I told a 
prominent Market Street merchant that I was going 
shooting for a short time. He asked what I was going 
to shoot at this time o' year. "Brant," I replied. 

"Well," he said, "when I was a boy I used to shoot 
squirrels with a rifle, and got so that I could shoot them 
back of the head every time." (How far back he didn't 
say.) 

"Well," I answered, "brant are much harder to 
shoot than squirrels, for they run faster than rabbits 
and are much bigger." "Well, I declare," he said, 

89 



and then relapsed into silence, perfectly satisfied that 
he knew all about it. 

For the information of this Market Street merchant 
I will say that the brant is smaller than a goose, and at this 
time of year is on his way Northward, merrily helped along 
by hundreds of guns belching forth No. 3 to No. i shot 
from all sorts of innocent looking shooting boxes, sur- 
rounded with decoys, both artificial and natural. 

The brant is here in countless numbers. 

It is a bird of beautiful plumage and graceful form ; 
plump and fat, swift of wing and wary and suspicious of 
anything and everything that bears the slightest semblance 
of danger. There is also a mystery surrounding it which 
has bothered the scientists for ages and is still bothering 
them — namely, the wherabouts of its breeding habitat. 
The late Professor Spencer Baird worried himself more, 
perhaps, than any other savant over this undiscovered 
territory. No living man, it is said, has ever seen the 
nest or egg of the brant, and no matter how far explorers 
have forced their way Northward, the brant has always 
been seen winging on still further North. Therefore the 
guides out here (some of whom have grown gray in the 
pursuit of "brantin'") claim that there surely must be 
an open Polar Sea where the weather is warm enough to 
hatch out their eggs, and where food is plenty and nutri- 
tious, for they come down in the fall of the year fat and 
sleek as a pullet. The young birds come South strong of 
wing and as cunning as — well, I might say of them, as 
Buckingham said of the little Duke of York. " So cun- 
ning and so young is wonderful ! ' ' 

90 



Monomoy Island lies off the mainland in the ocean 
a few miles from Chatham, Mass. Between the island 
and the mainland the succulent sea grass waves gracefully 
to the gentle swell of the tide or the fierce ' ' Northeaster, ' ' 
which, by the way, has been blowing a gale since we 
arrived. 

Sea grass is the natural food of the ' ' brant. ' ' The 
stretch of sheltered water here is large enough to leave 
the birds plenty of room to move around in swinging 
columns without coming within range of the sink boxes, 
and it is only when the tides and wands are favorable that 
the birds are brought within the line of danger. The 

"Monomoy Brant- 
ing Club ' ' (the only 
one, I believe, on the 
continent) has a 
couple of comfort- 
able houses built on 
a bluff or sand dune, 
with artistically con- 
structed sink boxes 

HOMEWARD BOUND; ON CHESUNCOOK LAKE. 

placed at the most 
favorable points and a large stock of wooden decoys. Live 
brant with clipped wings help to lure their brethren into 
danger, and with as much apparent satisfaction and enjoy- 
ment as the setter dog takes in flushing grouse or quail. 
The club is formed mostly of Eastern gentlemen, all, of 
course, enthusiasts in sporting, and whose number is 
limited to twenty, each member being entitled to invite 
one guest. Four members only are permitted to be here 
at one time, and, as the shooting lasts five weeks, each set 




with their guests have one week's fun. At dinner in the 
little hotel at Chatham we met the party who had pre- 
ceded us, returning to the "Hub" with seventy-four 
"brant," bronzed cheeks and ravenous appetites. 

Four guides are engaged by the club. They are men 
who thoroughly know the habits of the birds, understand 
the tides and currents, and handling of boats, and know 
how to shoot besides. 

One of them has been continuously at the business of 
"guidin' " for thirty-one years, during all that time only 
missing two days — one when he had to go to a funeral 
and the other when he had to go to court. The care of 
family, the tender offices of friends, the seductions ot 
courtship, the excitement of the play or the circus, none 
of these has any allurement for these weather-beaten, 
blue-eyed and kindly men when once the branting season 
opens. During the rest of the year they earn a comfort- 
able but precarious living by fishing and wrecking. They 
watch the shifting sands, the gloomy fogs and the blind- 
ing snow storms with earnest solicitude, for this is truly 
a dangerous place for the unwary mariner. Close by the 
island lies the wreck of the yacht Alva, which all the 
wealth of its owner, Mr. Vanderbilt, could not save. 
Right on the beach lie the keel, the ribs and spars of the 
good ship Altamah, while her cargo of lumber is strewn 
on the shore for a long distance, the drifting sand now 
covering it up as with a winding sheet. This vessel 
struck the wreck of the Alva, opening a huge rent in 
her bow, and the lashing surf did the rest. During the 
winter the fine steamer Cottage City, from Portland, Me., 
to New York, struck in about fourteen feet of water. 



She held fast until thousands of boxes of merchan- 
dise were thrown overboard, when, with the aid of a tug 
and a high tide, she was gotten off, and without rudder 
or sternpost was towed to New York. 

Our friends, the guides, lament the fact that most of 
the jettisoned cargo floated out to sea, but with the re- 
mainder, which was weighty enough to sink, they have 
been engaged for some weeks grappling in fifteen feet 
of water, and bringing their find to the surface and shore. 
Of course, some "odd" lots have been brought up. 
Among them was a case of 2500 little boxes of split leaden 
bullets for fish line sinkers and several cases of white, flinty 
rock, consigned to a Trenton pottery, which the wreckers 
are much out of heart about, because of their weight and 
also because no one down here can tell whether they are 
worth the freight to Trenton or not. 

These wreckers, branters and fishermen live a happy 
life and are as full of content as an egg is of meat. No 
fluctuations in stocks ; no frills of fashion ; no telephone 
reduced rates ; no silver craze — in fact nothing under the 
sun or above it can knock the bottom out of a " branter's' ' 
content, give him but the favoring tide and howling gust 
that bring the brant "in plenty" to his decoys. This 
it is that warms up his imagination, cheers his heart, 
and fills his pocket with "the coin of the realm." 



THE QUAINT CAPE CODDERS. 

Ah, what a life were this ! 

— Henry P'l. 

ON my journey down here, via the Old Colony Rail- 
road, I was much impressed by the evidences on 
every hand of the bitter struggle the sturdy Cape 
Cod people have to wage at all times to provide the 
rude shelter and homely fare which their existence in 
these barren stretches of sand dunes, pine forests and 
cranberry bogs demands. We can, without any trouble, 
read in their faces the story of scanty crops, growai on 
poor soil ; of continued exposure to wind and weather in 
the pursuit of the finny tribe that swim in the numerous 
bays and channels as well as in the dangerous regions of 
the " Grand Banks " and Block Island, or in the laborious 
and patience-trying business of raising cranberries. 

The Old Colony Railroad, whose stock is held largely 
by the natives of Cape Cod, and who look upon it as the 
great railroad of the world, has a time-honored custom of 
giving to its stockholders on the Cape a free ticket to 
Boston and return, in order that they maj^ attend the 
Road's annual meeting in that city. A man owning one 
share has this privilege in conmion with his more wealthy 

94 



neighbor. Therefore, if a Cape Codder has five shares 
you may rest assured they will be entered singly for each 
member of his family so all of them may make the annual 
tour to the " Hub." Of course, this was always a great 
day, requiring the whole equipment of the Road to handle 
the crowd with safety and dispatch. 

Now there are grave stories told that, as the control 
of the road has changed, this great free excursion is to be 
done away with, and there are loud murmurings of dis- 
content among the people at the abolition of this old-time 
custom . 

Spicy tales are told of the Cape Codder and his 
church-mouse poverty, and some of these are sharpened 
to a poetic point : 

There was a young lady of Truro, 

Who sighed for a 'hogauy bureau ; 

But her pa said " Great God ! 

All the men in Cape Cod 

Couldn't pay for a 'hogany bureau !" 

But, we are here to shoot "brant" not mahogany 
bureaus, and therefore I will now describe to you a sight 
I saw yesterday, and one that will linger in my memory 
as an instance of the wonderful instinct and weather- 
wisdom of migrating sea fowl. 

For days strong Nor'easters have blown fiercely, 
accompanied by snow, sleet, rain, thunder and lightning, 
and through these the brant could have made but little 
headway had they tried to proceed on their journey 
Northwards. But they didn't try. They knew better 
than "Old Probs" what the weather was going to be. 
Yesterday afternoon there was a lull in the storm, a fog 

95 



set in, and the brant congregated in long columns, flap- 
ping their wings and making the most deafening outcries. 
Our guides said : ' ' The birds are preparing to start. The 
weather will settle by morning;" but after the fog came a 
furious gale, with vivid flashes of lightning, loud peals of 
thunder and down-pouring of rain. This condition of 
affairs lasted all night, and for once our confidence in the 
brant's wisdom and judgment was shaken. But lo and 
behold, this morning the sun arose bright and warm, with 
a Southwest wind, and up and away the brant were flying 
Northward. First a serits of swooping circles, rising 
higher and higher in the air, a pause, then off they go by 
the thousands, in flocks of from three to five hundred, 
carefully marshaled and efficiently led by some old gander, 
who will allow his followers no rest for the soles of their 
feet until the Bay of Fundy or Prince Edward's Island is 
reached. 

This afternoon, no doubt, other flocks equally as 
large will reach here from the South, stopping to rest 
and to feed before they again resume their journey to 
their m^^sterious and unknown nesting place. As the 
one conversation, the one aim (f the "nine on us'' is 
brant, we have become saturated with the theme, and we 
think brant, dream brant, talk brant and shoot brant. 
One of the party has been worked upon so much by the 
excitement that at the card table — for there's a pack 
down here — he will throw down his hand and wildly 
exclaim: "I want to shoot a brant!" In bed he will 
toss wearily from side to side as the others sit and watch 
him, and he will moan, " I want to shoot a brant." After 
a while a little tiny snore is heard, then a faint murmur, 



" I want to shoot" — another louder snore and a whisper 
— " a brant," and then he has reached the land of dreams 
banging away at the birds right and left, jumping out of 
the sink box to retrieve them from the swift-flowing tide, 
wearily carrying them back to the shanty, past ten one 
hundred yard stakes — one thousand yards of deep wading 
— and then awakening to the crushing truth " 'tis but a 
dream. ' ' But we are all getting our share of the shooting 
and even our brant enthusiast will soon have enough to 
quiet his excited mind and cool his heated imagination. 




A BIG DEER KILLED BY JAMES J. MARTINDALE, SON OF THE AUTHOR. 

The cooking at the club house on Monomoy Island 
deserves a warm word of tribute. There are two chefs — 
Sam Josephs and Frank Rogers — who revel in producing 
dishes peculiar to the Cape and Island that are at once 
enticing, nourishing and appetizing. Some of their 
productions dfey my faint power to depict, but I will long 



cherish the recollections of their huge bowl of delicious 
stewed scallops, their quahog stews, quahog pies, quahog 
fritters, clam chowders, steamed clams, boiled clams, 
fresh boiled cod, fish balls with the accompaniment of 
thin slices of raw Bermuda onions, fresh cucumbers, the 
finest of butter, Java coffee, and water that made my heart 
thump when I tasted it to think how long, oh, how long 
it will be before we can hope to see an American city 
supplied with such sparkling aqua pura ! Now, to this 
magnificent bill of fare, please add ravenous appetites for 
one and all of us from our open air exercise, and what 
wonder then that when we turn into our bunks sweet 
sleep, sleep without bromides, sleep withotit hop pillows, 
or without any other soporific spur, at once embraces us, 
and in spite of the pounding of the surf at our very 
doors, in spite of the storm and its thunder pounding in 
the sky above us, we awake not until Alonzo, the guide, 
says: "Gentlemen, gentlemen, the tide's aflowin' in," 
and everybody gets up. 



'^ife;^.fe;fcJ^ 



98 



THE WRECKER. 

A brave fellow ! He keeps his tides well. 

— Timon of Athens. 

ON the barren and inhospitable sand dune of four 
miles long by one-quarter of a mile broad, which 
formerly was laid down on the old charts as 
"Malabar" Island, but now, for some reason, I know 
not what, is called Monomoy Island, a number of profes- 
sional wreckers ply their risky, exciting and speculative 
calling. I have always associated, in my mind, wreckers 
with pirates, thinking that the terms were synonymous. 
On the contrary, I have found that the wrecker is a man 
who risks his very existence to save propert}^ both of 
vessel and cargo, as well as human life; that in the pur- 
suit of his calling he shows rare bravery, great nerve, 
hardihood of no common character, shrewd wisdom and 
cunning in disposing of his "flotsam and jetsam" and a 
knowledge of law relating to maritime affairs that often 
outwits the keenest Cape Cod barrister. 

For a week I have been with four of these rugged 
sea dogs, all of them seasoned with more than half a 
century (one of them 70 years of age), and yet when the 
winds are fierce, the fogs dense, the snows blinding, they 
are one and all on the qtti vive for the signals of 



distress from some unfortunate coaster, or steamer, or full 
rigged ship, as the case may be. To-day I have walked 
for miles along the beach, threading my way over and 
among a cargo of Southern hard pine lumber of over two 
hundred thousand feet, which is piled high and dry on 
the sand from the wreck of the Altamaha, a Scotch 
vessel, built forty -five years ago. This lumber was sold 
a few days since for $2.75 and $2.25 per thousand feet, as 
it lies, and men- are now at work removing the coverlet 
of sand from it, and measuring and marking it. Then 
the purchaser will have his hands full in getting it to the 
Boston market and to solve the question, not how much 
profit he will reap, but, how much will he lose on the 
purchase. 

Close by the island lies the wreck of Mr. Vanderbilt's 
famous yacht, Alva, whose walnut fixtures and trimmings 
are even yet coming dail}^ to shore. A contractor is now, 
and has been for some time, at work endeavoring to blow 
her to pieces and removing the obstruction, the Govern- 
ment having awarded him the contract for about $9000, 
(only half the amount the next lowest bidder asked for 
doing the same work.) The contractor brought a little 
steamer down from Brooklyn, (she is so slow, even under 
full steam as I saw her this morning, that I mistook her 
for a stationary light ship), and when the tide is at its 
lowest ebb he is able to get about half an hour's work on 
the wreck each day, as it then lies in fourteen feet of 
water. It is thought he will not make a fortune out of 
the job. 

The owners of the valuable steamer Cottage City, 
which came ashore here, the vessel and cargo valued at 



$130,000, sent the captain of the life-saving crew, who 
had given vital assistance to the vessel in getting her o£F 
the shoals after she had jettisoned a large portion of her 
cargo, the munificent sum of $5 for each man of his crew. 
The captain promptly returned the donation, with the 
assertion that he himself could easily afford to give his 
crew that much without seriously hurting his bank 
account. The owners of a small coaler that was helped 
off by the same crew promptly sent the men $25 each, 
which was a distinction with a difference. 

Since I arrived here a vessel of 500 tons burden has 
gone to the bad on the Handkerchief Shoals, which are 
a few miles from the Island. A fleet of small craft is 
daily making visits to the wreck, buying and laying in a 
generous supply of coal for the winter's fires of the resi- 
dents of Harwich, Dennis and Chatham at varying prices 
of from $1 per ton to a lump price for what the dory, 
sloop, cat boat or yacht can hold. 

Some time since a vessel showed signals of distress 
off the island in a moderate storm. The daring wreckers 
were soon aboard of her, and found the captain, with his 
wife and children, anxious to be taken ofi". The vessel 
had five and a half feet of water in the hold. The captain 
was half owner. She was well insured, and he did not 
care what became of her so that she was beached and 
the crew, himself and family taken off in safety. The 
wreckers, together with the life-saving service, manned 
the three pumps, got her under way and into the calm 
waters of the bay, where she.was sold by the underwriters, 
the wreckers' share of the " treasure; trove " being about 
$40 per man. 



Another vessel was abandoned here some years ago 
which, when the wreck was broken up, was found to 
have two huge plugs in her side below the water line, 
showing conclusively that the captain, in order to reap 
the insurance, had deliberately filled her with water. 
Then, finding she was sinking too fast, he had driven the 
plugs home so as to enable the crew to get ashore without 
danger. 

One of the narrators of these "tales of shipwreck" 
waddles along with one leg bent out from him like a 
drawn bow. He has had it broken three times, and now, 
while it will bear his "heft," as he calls it, he can carry 
but little addition to it without severe physical distress. 
The first time it was broken was aboard a shipwrecked 
vessel that he had agreed to stay by — all alone — w^hile a 
tug towed her into a haven of rest. The wind was blow- 
ing a gale. The hawser being drawn so tight as to have 
little or no ' ' bight, " " he had become fearful that the strain 
causing it to fray by rubbing on the sides of the ' ' eye 
through which it passed, might part it. While he was ex- 
amining it the the iron plating of the "eye" snapped and 
crumbling like an egy^ shell under the strain, one of the 
pieces struck him on his leg below the knee, breaking it 
in three places. He was just able to signal the tug, 
which was soon along side. A consultation between the 
injured man and the captain resulted in the latter taking 
him into Hyannis, Mass., where he was driven to the 
station in time to take a train for New Bedford, the 
nearest place, in those days, to obtain efficient surgical aid. 

The railroad service at that time was primitive, the 
time slow, and the track rough as a corduroy road to the 



crippled wrecker. The journey in the cars alone lasted 
just eight hours, and during the whole of this excruciat- 
ing journey he had to hold his knee tightly with his 
hands. The doctor who set it complimented him on his 
wonderful exhibition of pluck and grit, kept him in bed 
eight weeks and sent him home with, as he described it, 
the "best bad leg" he had ever seen. In these days of 
anesthetics and improved railroad facilities such a trip 
would be of rare occurrence. 

Among the Cape's quaint customs I find the old 
Scottish one known as "bundling. " But this, like other 
of her quaint customs, is slowly yielding to the march of 
the newspaper, the telegraph, the telephone, and the rail- 
road. I scarcely believed that this custom still existed 
or, indeed, ever had a foothold on this continent, but I 
soon found indubitable proof of it. "Bundling," you 
must know, is a method of courtship based on motives 
of economy, (the saving of light and fire). It is still 
practiced in Scotland though gradually dying out there, 
as increasing prosperity affords broader scope for comfort 
and less necessity for economy. 



>J^ 



103 



A WARY BIRD. 

We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings. 

— Hamlet. 

*7f MAN, to be successful in brant shooting must be a 
\jX sportsman of the most enthusiastic type and a fair 
^ \ shot. Moreover, he must possess a good constitu- 
tion, plenty of patience, and plenty of ability to defy cold, 
wet and exposure. He must expect many disappoint- 
ments and a great deal of waiting, for the birds are so 
wary and so seldom deceived it is rarely he will find 
them within the range of his heaviest charges of powder 
and shot. When the chance of a shot is obtained and he 
downs his bird, the excitement is over quick as a flash 
and he wonders how it all happened. L,et me describe 
how it is done. 

During the early spring the guides have sunk boxes 
large enough to hold three men. The boxes are placed 
either out on the bay in shallow water, piling up around 
them hundreds of wheelbarrowfuls of sand at low tide 
(covering the same and neatl}' fastening it down with a 
sail cloth, so that the rushing tides cannot carry it away) 
to represent a sand bar ; or they are fixed on some jutting 
point of land in the bay, always using plenty of sand, 
behind which the gunners are to sit with bowed heads, 



but with watchful eyes and ears. Out in front of these 
boxes wooden decoys are fixed on a framework like the 
letter V, five on each frame, all strung together, so that 
they turn with the tide and wind, and look natural 
enough to deceive the oldest gander in the flock. 

Then two gunners with the guide wend their way to 
the boxes when the tide is flowing in, the gunners encased 
in hip rubber boots, two or three pairs of stockings, a 
heavy suit (flannel shirts, sweaters, overcoats), and lastly 
an oilskin suit, if the weather be rough. The gunners 
get in the boxes, arrange their pipes and shells and bail 
the water out, while the guide takes from a basket a pair 
of brant with clipped wings w^hich he deftly harnesses 
together like a span of horses. The yokes, made with 
leather thongs, are put on their feet not their necks. They 
are allowed to swim or wade out quite a distance, being 
secured by a cord, which is kept on a reel in the sink box. 

The particular offices these birds are to perform are 
(when the brant are flying or swumming anywhere near) 
to flap their wings and "honk" their wild relatives into 
danger among the decoys ; and it is amazing how intel- 
ligent they are in their work ; how they get away out of 
range when the wild birds are being covered by the deadly 
breech-loader, and how they chatter to themselves with 
seeming satisfaction when the battery has been unmasked 
and the fallen birds retrieved. When all is ready the 
guide gets into the box, and then the trials of endurance, 
patience and expectancy begin. There is no lack of 
birds in sight — thousands of them — and their cries at 
times are deafening, but they keep provokingly far 
enough off to make you feel as if your head must never 

105 



again be raised. You soon get cramped, numbed with 
the cold wind or, maybe rain, or snow or sleet blowing 
and pelting in your face. But you must not get up. 




SHOT BY MOONLIGHT, AND AS WE FOUND HIM NEXT DAY. 

Once I sat for over five hours in a box, with rain, 
snow and sleet driving in my teeth, and occasionally 
the water from the high tide washing over my back and 
down my neck, patiently waiting for ni}^ reward. It 
came at last. Up like a flash and within range came five 
birds, flying down the wind with the speed of a carrier 
pigeon. We got a shot apiece; three were left behind, 
while the other two were soon miles away, and our long 
wait and exposure forgotten. We say: " How did those 
two birds get away ? " "I'll bet they're crippled!" "Watch 
them!" "They're going down!" "No, they're not!" 
"Yes, they are!" and so on, but the birds are not ours, 
that is a sure thing. So you never know when out of the 

1 06 



haze, or the clear sky, like a meteor from behind you, or 
straight on, a bunch of birds may come, deceived by your 
pair of live " honkers ' ' and your bunch of wooden shams. 
Or again, a flock may be feeding and unconsciously drift- 
ing with the inflowing tide towards your box, occasionally 
giving a quick, suspicious look, swimming back a little, 
then onward again, and, of course, to raise the tip of 3'our 
hat above the brim of the sand bank or to get up to stretch 
yourself is tantamount to a speedy departure of the 
"mysterious bird of the North." Therefore it is the 
man who can stand this sort of work the best who is 
likely to make the biggest bag. But a great deal depends 
upon the wind as well, for if the currents of air should 
be blowing off shore there is not much chance of success- 
ful shooting, as the wind constantly drifts them away 
from the decoys, while they are feeding, and if any should 
get shot and drop down at long range, they are apt to get 
out of reach before they can be retrieved. 

We were seven days on Monomoy Island, and we 
had a fierce Nor'easter blowing nearly the whole time, so 
that what success we had (thirty-six brant,) was solely 
attributable to lots of patience and perseverance against 
hard conditions. 

But the sport compels you to be out in the open air, 
to inhale the ozone and the ocean breezes, those twin bene- 
f-ctors that bring to the hunter his proverbial appetite. 
And, Oh that appetite ! You have it and a digestion to 
wait on it that might tackle a brick pile without getting 
out of order. There is another thing you have, which is 
not to be sneezed at — the gratification of knowing that 
with your trusty gun, your hidden retreats, your enticing 



decoys and your unwearied patience j^ou are more than a 
match for this the grandest and most wary of all game 
birds. 

" Nor on the surges of the boundless air, 
Though borne triumphant, are they safe ; the gun, 
Glanc'd just, and sudden, from the gunner's eye, 
O'ertakes their sounding pinions ; and again. 
Immediate brings them from the towering wing. 
Dead to the ground ; or drives them wide dispersed, 
Wounded and wheeling various, down the wind." 

This season the brant arrived in great numbers at 
Monomoy as early as February, but finding their natural 
food — the eel grass — sealed in ice, they were forced to 
wing their way backward, after many attempts to get at 
their feeding grounds ; the cold weather thus compelling 
them to make trips of hundreds of miles to the Southward 
before they could obtain their sustenance. But they are 
grand "flyers" and a few hundred miles of flight is only 
like a morning walk for them, and they don't seem to worry 
the least bit about it ; but as soon as the ice melted and the 
succulent eel grass was exposed to view, then they arrived 
in countless numbers. Some saj' that between the fifth 
and tenth of April more birds were at the Island than ever 
were seen before at one time. But the wrecks and wreck- 
age there, drew all manner of sail boats to the scene to get 
coal and litmber, and thus the birds were continually dis- 
turbed in their feeding. They were occasionally fired on 
at long range from these sail boats, which harassed and 
frightened them, keeping them for hours on the move. 
This, together with unfavorable winds and storms, reduced 
the total bag for the season to one-hundred and ninety- 

108 



seven brant. Such was the result of the work of seven 
weekly parties, aggregating fifty-seven sportsmen, with an 
average of twenty-eight to each party, and, as our party 
bagged thirty-six, we have no reason to complain. Of the 
one-hundred and ninety -seven killed, one-hundred and 
three were young birds and ninety-four old birds. This 
proportion of young birds ought to have made the shooting 
better, as the young birds (in the language of the president 
of the club, Mr. W. Hapgood) "are less wary, more social 
and more easily decoyed, and will carry off less lead than 
the tough old birds, and then it often happens that the 
elders are led by unsuspicious youth into places of danger 
where it would be impossible to coax them when separated, 
therefore the presence of so many juvenile visitors is 
always a joy to the heart of the sportsman. " 



'^^ 



A GLIMPSE AT THE ** WHITE.'' 

I'll drop me now the current of my sport 
To loll awhile in Fashion's giddy court. 

— Anon. 

Y f AVING for years made an annual pilgrimage to the 
|N| White Sulphur Springs — the ' ' Saratoga of the 
^ A South ' ' — it has gradually dawned upon me that 
few portions of the globe furnish so much material for 
the pen of the novelist and the pencil of the artist. The 
scenerj^ is so varied, so romantically beautiful in its 
wealth of valleys teeming with fruitful crops, and luxur- 
iant foliage that holds half hid in its bosom the modest 
cabin of some former slave, while here and there the 
roof of the more pretentious home peeks through the 
green as if to greet the sun and sniff the bracing air. 
All this and in a frame of rugged mountains enchanting 
in their wildness, and the picture is complete. 
So much for the artist. 

The novelist will find it a great gathering place of 
the wealth and beauty of the South, with daily and 
nightly scenes of revelry, amusement, flirting, and love 
making. He may witness the excitement and seduction 
of the "green baize table," in a neighborhood rife with 
stories of the war, which raged in and about the ' ' White ' ' 
during the whole time the direful strife was in progress. 
The hotel at one time was used as a hospital for the 



Northern troops ; at another as a stable and resting place 
for the Confederates. Being only five miles from the Vir- 
ginia line, this West Virginia watering place came to be 
looked upon as neutral territory. Here Presidents from 
the earliest days of the nineteenth century have been wont 
to spend their holidays and hold court and dispense official 
patronage beneath the old oaks that lift their stately heads 
above the famous lawn. Senators, Representatives, 
bankers and Governors have discussed measures of Nat- 
ional and State policy on the porches of the hotel or 
under the roofs of its one-hundred cottages. 

A Southern colonel who had lost everything during 
the war — except his love for whisky — came to sojourn at 
the "White." Now he was never known to have any 
money, but was mostly always flitting around the bar, 
waiting for the refrain "come and take suthin' , Colonel," 
which invitation, by the way, he was never known to 
refuse. In consequence of these eccentricities he was 
looked upon with suspicion by the manager of the house, 
who promptly sent him his bill at the end of the week, 
with the request to pay up. The Colonel put the bill in 
his pocket and promised to attend to it. A couple of 
days passed and the manager stirred him up again, this 
time sending the message that he must either pay the bill 
or leave. The Colonel asked "Did the manager send 
you to me with such a message?" glaring at the clerk 
with a fierce I'U-run-you-through look. The clerk tim- 
orously said that he had. "Well," said the Colonel, 
"tell the manager that I'll leave at once, for that is only 
faar, and I believe in bein' faar." And he left the hotel. 
It need hardly be added that he left the hotel bill too. 



The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, on account, I 
presume, of its being a rather out-of-the-way route to 
Chicago, has succeeded in getting the Trunk Line 
Association to grant it the privilege of selling through 
tickets to Chicago, with the right to stop off at any station 
on the line. This gave me a practical opportunity ot 
studying the great value of such a concession. As a 
number of European tourists have been attracted to this 
line by reason of the concession, I interviewed several of 
them and found that all of them had selected the route 
because they could "break the journey as often as they 
pleased." So they are jogging along leisurely, stopping 
at such points as they think will interest them, and there- 
by getting a much better idea of the varied interests and 
scenery of the country. All of them had stopped in 
Philadelphia, some for a few hours, some for a couple 
of days. They said they were more pleased with Phila- 
delphia than any other city they had seen, and were 
astonished at its size, its Public Buildings, its Park and 
its stores. Astonished, because they had "never cared 
much about Philadelphia, don't you know," as explained 
by one Englishman, whose complexion showed the blush 
of forty years acquaintance with Bass' ale. 

They were pleased apparentl}' with everything but 
the condition of the streets ; the cobble paving exciting 
their ridicule, and our roads their commiseration. I said 
that they must not expect a city which covered more 
ground than London, — with only one fourth of its popula- 
tion, — which was constantly growing and expanding, 
which furnished comfortable homes first and streets and 
street paving after, to be so well paved as a city over two 



thousand years old, on whose streets Roman Emperors 
have walked, and whose roads were planned and built by 
Roman engineers before the time of the Saviour. The 
Englishman said: "Bless my eyes, I never thought of 
that; it puts a new light on things here, for, come to 
think of it, this is a new country, and of course the cities 
must be new, too." 

Oh, but won't these European tourists have wonderful 
stories to tell on their return ! Many and many will be 
the imitations of Dickens' "American Notes," and many 
and many will be the foolish criticisms made upon and 
about us. But our visitors will be profoundly impressed 
with the extent of the country, with the variety of its 
climate and scenery, with the restless, irresistible push and 
nerve of the people, with their material welfare and their 
prosperity, and they will return with broader views of 
humanity and the world than they ever dreamt of. In 
this respect the World's Fair will prove a blessing and a 
grand advertisement for the nation. 

Yea, verily as I have said the novelist might find 
here plenty of food for his fancy, full of richness flavored 
with facts and seasoned with all the spice of romance. 

The genial Southern gentleman who is superinten- 
dent of the hotel, and known far and wide as "The 
Major," could if he would, unwind many a yarn on the 
late ' ' unpleasantness. ' ' He might, for instance, tell of the 
time when he, with a troop of Confederate cavalry, was 
commanding the bridge over the Green Briar River, six 
miles below here. When from the opposite hills was seen 
an immense force of the " Boys in Blue" defiling down the 
long road. When the Major and his troop were discovered, 



how the " Yanks" put spurs to their horses and how the 
"Johnnies" started for safer quarters. How they came 
flying past the Grecian columns of the great hotel with 
the "Yanks" close after them. How they plunged 
through "Dry Creek," "up hill and down dale," right 
over the Allegheny Mountains to Old Sweet Springs, a 
ride of about twenty miles, before the pursuit and flight 
was over. But the Major and his command w^ere safe ; 
not a man was lost. 

The Major's tales are always full of powder. 

Eleven miles from here is Lewisburg, W. Va., the 
county town of Greenbriar county. To reach it a high 
mountain has to be overcome, or overgone, on the higher 
points of which is a stretch of utterly worthless land. 
The soil, what little there is, is red, stony and incapable 
of producing anything better than an occasional thistle or 
a stunted, sickly little pine shrub. An old time stage 
coach was one hot day toiling slowly and painfully up 
the long hill, filled with passengers who were making 
merry over the "pore land," one man venturing the 
remark ' ' that the man who owned that land must be a 

d d fool." Thereupon a long, lanky, West Virginian 

rose up and confronted the speaker in an angry and defiant 
manner and asserted "that he owned that land, but he 

wasn't such a d d fool as they took him for, as he 

only owned half on it." 

Coming down from a horseback ride on Kate Moun- 
tain, one of West Virginia's giant hills, my young son 
said to me, "Ain't these West Virginia mountaineers 
quaint people?" I readily answered that they were. I 
have never seen their quaintness and a few of their other 



peculiarities equaled. Old-fashioned fellows, homely, 
frugal, careless of dress and the proprieties of life gener- 
ally, eternal chewers of tobacco, iron-clad swearers, and 
chronically hardup. The current incidents of time have 
no claims on their attention unless they relate to the 
triumph of Democracy or the success of the "season " at 
the "White." The latter more particularly, for on it is 
based their sole hope of seeing some ready cash during 
the year. This famous resort furnishes employment to 
about five hundred "help" in the summer and maybe 
fifty or more the rest of the year, and thus it becomes the 
distributing source of a goodly number of thousands of 
dollars annually. It would be hard to compute the 
amount the liverymen, florists, photographers, doctors, 
musicians and the gentlemen who so seductively preside 
over the fortunes of the "green table" rake in from 
the army of guests who patronize this ' ' Saratoga of the 
South." Speaking of liverymen one of them, an abom- 
inable swearer, promised me he would abandon the habit, 
which I told him I abhorred. It seems, however, he 
forgot his promise. Here is his letter to me verbatim, 
which will tell how. 

Pleas fiud iuclosed fifteen dolers to pay youre 

bill. tbe reson of delay was, hard times, bad 

weather, sickness and no money, d d if I 

believe there's $500 in circulation in the hole 

United States. 

Yours Truly 

I reproached him for having broken his solemn word 
about swearing. "Well," he said, "I tried not to, but 
I couldn't help it ; times were so awful pore. ' ' ' ' Why, " 



said lie, "I owed a man ten cents who lived eighteen 
miles off, and he drove in one day and sat around 
for over an hour when he said he wished I would pay 
him that ten cents, as he had driven all the way in 
after it, which would make the round trip thirty-six miles 
for ten cents. " ' He told this incident to prove the scarcity 
of money out here. 




^BAZUSKIS RIVER. 



Last year a lumberman who had got into financial 
difficulties allowed three notes which I held against him 
to go to protest. I was advised to give them to a firm ot 
lawyers in a neighboring towui to collect. So I drove 
over and found that the firm consisted of two brothers, 
one of whom was that very day in the height of excite- 
ment running as a candidate for a public office of a 
responsible and honorable character. After a chase I 
finally captured the other brother and gave him the notes 



for collection. He said he guessed there wasn't much 
use, but he'd try his best, and putting the notes in his 
pocket drove off. Last week I happened to meet the 
maker of the notes, who was joyous over the fact that he 
was soon going to be able to pay off his creditors, and 
asked after the three notes. I told him to whom I had 
given them for collection, but he said he had never heard 
from them. He advised me to ride to the town and get 
them, so next day I started over the mountains to see the 
legal lights. On the road I met my friend the lumberman 
coming back, and he reported that the lawyers had no 
recollection of my claim whatever. 

On my arrival I found the pundits in a little upstairs 
room seated at a table covered with envelopes, opened 
letters, bills of sale, bonds, writs of replevin, leases, 
promissory notes and "the Lord knows what." 

The elder brother was a genial, kindly-looking man, 
with an old straw hat, a shirt much the worse for wear, 
and no coat, vest, collar or necktie. He assured me when 
I told him who I was that he had promptly presented my 
claim to the lumberman, but he found that if he sued he 
hadn't any chance, and so had waited. I asked for the 
return of the notes. Then a hunt was started and such a 
hunt as only the immortal Dickens could, with justice, 
have described. Brother number one looked through the 
letters, papers and portfolios at his side of the table. 
Brother number two ditto at his side. The day was hot, 
niwggy and oppressive; they got worried, excited and 
nervous. Brother number two said he guessed he'd go 
home and look through his clothes, which he did, brother 
number one in the meantime going through his printed 

117 



blanks in his search. Brother number two finally returned 
without the notes and gave it as his opinion that I had 
never given him any notes. This was awkward on num- 
ber one, because he had related very minutely just how 
he had presented the notes to the debtor. 

So it was, as an Irishman said, "like bein' in the 
cinther of a hobble," and with a look of despair, some- 
thing like the pictures we used to see of the " Knight of 
the Rueful Countenance," they gave up the hunt and 
acknowledged they would have to give the debtor a bond 
to keep him harmless from the notes if they ever turned 
up, and their only apology for their carelessness was that 
notes in West Virginia "ain't much account, no how, 
when thej^'d got to be sued for," and so they didn't "set 
much store b}- them." 

At the lumbering town of Ronceverte, W. Va., eleven 
miles below here, on the Greenbriar river, a great boom 
and a gigantic saw mill have for years impeded the pas- 
sage of black bass, trout and other fish up the river, which 
of olden times was always a noted stream for the bass. 
The fish used to be of immense size, and, of course, as 
gamey as black bass can be in cold mountain streams. 
During the early spring of this year the ice and winter 
floods caused a break in the big dam which took consider- 
able time in repairing, and lo and behold, the river this 
summer is full of the fighting beauties eager to take fly, 
minnow or even bait, hungry — voraciously hungry — and 
now there is "fishing as is fishing," and the Izaak Wal- 
tons are wending their way hither from distant parts to 
pursue their fascinating sport. 



It is intimated that the President of the United States 
may be induced to come for a few da5'S, as four years ago 
he plied his rod on the banks of the head waters of the 
turbulent James river, about thirty miles from here, at 
Clifton Forge. Verily the old Anglo-Saxon love of sport 
is engrafted in us all to a greater or less extent, else why 
should it be that the shibboleth of black bass should 
be more potent in drawing people from a distance than 
the charm of polite and cultured society, the beneficial 
properties of the famous waters of the White Sulphur, 
or even the cusine of the great hotel and the considerate 
attention of the Chevalier Bayard of hotel men — "The 
Major." But so it is, and I for one would not want to 
change it. L,et American business men devote more time 
to outdoor sport, spend more of it in the open air and the 
knowledge will soon begin to dawn upon them that dol- 
lars are not the onl}' good things in this life, and as it can 
be lived only once, it is better during that " once ' ' to hold 
on to a share of good health, even though they may drop 
a few dollars in doine it. 



>J^ 



A FIGHT TO THE DEATH. 

Both sides fiercely fought. 

— Henry VI. 

WE are a few "city men" up here in the very heart 
of the wilderness of Pike count}^ Pa., each man 
expecting to catch his complement of thirty -five 
lusty speckled trout, which is all that the rules of the 
" Beaver Run Club," whose guests we are, will allow any 
member to kill in any one season (and the fish must be 
over eight inches in length, to boot, or back they go into 
the stream). 

Japan is said to be the home of the rhododendron, 
and it is also said that the whole island kingdom is one 
great bed of those gorgeously dressed flowers. Up here 
in Pike county is the home of the mountain laurel, which 
grows and thrives in wanton profusion everywhere about 
us. It seems to grow equally well on the ridges, in 
the thick cluster of the woods or down by the edges 
of the trout pond or its emptying stream; and, behold, 
it is here in all its glory, and well worth a trip from 
the heated city just to feast the eye upon its ravishing 
mass of colors, as the bushes sway to the breeze. The 
laurel is well backed up by great quantities of wild moun- 
tain roses, now in full bloom ; acres upon acres of black- 
berrv bushes, clothed with their white blossoms, and also 



the appetizing sight of the luscious wild strawberries, red 
ripe and bursting with their delicate acid sweetness, if the 
term may be used ; and why not mention the elderberry 
and the wild hop vines, both in the height of their rustic 
loveliness, and the hazel bushes that flourish by the road- 
side. The man whose sense of beauty remains unstirred 
by such miracles of Nature's coloring must be something 
of clod whose life is scarce worth the living. 

Maybe, however, if the flowers and waving grasses, 
and the spear-pointed fields of rye, now nearly ready for 
the reaper, do not arouse him to a knowledge that nature 
up here is working her miracles every hour, the singing 
of the wondrous variety of birds might entrance him, for 
here the feathered songsters, as well as our noblest game 
birds, thrive and multiply amazingly. As we arrived at 
night we heard only the solitary whip-poor-will, and we 
heard him from every direction. He seemed to be ubiqui- 
tous, but when "Phoebus 'gan to rise" next morning 
(Sunday) then did the bird concert truly begin. For a 
while it was hard to tell, from their notes, which was which, 
they all sang so lustily and joyously and well ; however, 
bye and bye I recognized the warble of the gay oriole, 
then the sweet, loving song ot the linnet, then the robin, 
the flicker, the catbird, the blue jay, the song sparrow, 
and from across the trout pond the familiar note of ' ' Bob 
White" which rang out clear and sweet, piercing the early 
morning air like a piccolo. A Wilson snipe started up 
from a bit of wet land, and swept away, saying, " Scape, 
scape, scape,' ' while a pair of sandsnipe swelled the chorus 
with their piping notes. The red- winged blackbird, the 
grackle and the mottle-breasted thrush were as busy and 



gleeful as the rest of the feathered songsters, and I had 
nearly forgotten to mention the leader of the choir, the 
bobolink. I heard him singing his rollicking, laughing 
song with such gusto I thought he would split his mar- 
velous little throat. 

But while the birds sang, and the bees worked, and 
the trout leaped swiftl}^ for the passing fly ; while nature 
seemed glad and laughing at her own handiwork, yet 
sorrow was in the land. As my friends and I sat around 
the grateful log fire in the club room, our talk was of the 
tragic death of young Walter Clark, son of 'Squire Clark 
(an old and respected magistrate of this county), and of 
the boy's funeral, which had just been held during the 
afternoon. The cause of his death was a fight to the 
finish between the boy and a big and vicious rattlesnake. 
The snake won and the boy won, for each killed the 
other. " 'Twas a duel to the death, ' ' and the story of the 
fight had to be told by conjecture, for there was no eye- 
witness. The fight was in the seclusion of the woods, 
and one of the combatants was dead and the other uncon- 
scious when found. Walter Clark was a boy of eleven 
summers, sturdy and strong of his age, but a fever had 
left him, as a reminder of its virulence, an impaired mind 
and imperfect speech. He had one marked trait, a strong 
antipathy to snakes and hornets, and would gladly fight 
either when opportunity offered. On Frida)- last his 
father, the 'Squire, was working in the field and Walter 
was helping him, barelegged,. with but shirt and pants on. 
The boy heard the ringing of a cow-bell, and said to his 
father, ' ' Cow ! cow ! " His father said, " Yes, I hear the 
bell, ' ' and went on with his work. The bo)' started down 



the road in the direction from whence the sound came, 
and that was the last seen of him until a search was made 
over three hours after. He was found away from the 
road, swollen and unconscious, his tongue out and 
swelled to such a size that his mouth could not be shut. 
He was bitten on his hands, his arms, his face and on his 
legs, and some twenty feet away from him was a great 
rattlesnake with its back broken in three places, its 
fangs inserted in its own body, forming a loop. A 
brother of Walter's, also a lad, had found him and car- 
ried him on his back for over a mile and a quarter, until 
his strength gave out and he fell by the wayside. His 
father ran out, found the two boys and at once .started to 
doctor the wounded one. Repeated doses of whisky and 
milk brought the boy back to consciousness for a while, 
when, with fierce look and gesture, he would shout, 
"Eam'd snake! dam'd snake!" but convulsions set in 
and he soon died. His body became spotted like the 
snake's, with streaks up his chest and sides, and spots 
upon his cheeks and brow. 

It is surmised that after breaking the rattler's back 
vvith his stick he rushed at it and caught it in his hands, 
trying to crush its life out, but that it bit him over and over 
again wherever it pleased, and finally fastened its fangs 
into its own body, and then the boy fell back in a swoon. 
A wagon was sent post haste to Stroudsburg for a coffin, 
but none could be had in that rustic town, and it was neces- 
sary to send to Easton for one. And so the savage, plucky 
boy has now been laid beneath the sod, and the neighbors 
and visitors to this wild region revel in stories of snakes, of 
snake bites and snake fights, and the men hereabouts look 



carefull.v where they tread, and jump at the rustling of 
every chipmunk that they hear, and the women — God 
bless them — they hug the seclusion and safety of the 
boarding-house or hotel porch and will not wander 
"afield" for love or money. Who can blame them. 
There are many more snakes up here just as deadly as the 
one that killed Walter Clark, and since the date of our 
mother Eve women have always dreaded snakes and ever 
will until the end of time when all our fears will be 
blotted out, masculine as well as feminine. 




124 



A LOST MAN AND A WOUNDED MOOSE. 

I have lost my way. 

— Atitony and Cleopatta. 

IT is the unexpected that always happens in hunting. 
When you most desire and look for your game, then 
is the time you don't see it, and when and where 
you don't look for it, then and there you're apt to run 
against it. 

My guides had told me marvelous tales of the 
hunting opportunities that flourished around a certain 
pond or small lake, a couple of days journey from our 
camping ground. To find out whether these tales were 
true or not, I thought it worih while to go there, 
especially as one of the guides had spent the previous 
winter in a lumber camp near by, and was familiar, or 
ought to have been, with the country. There was a very 
large bog, five miles long and about a mile broad, which 
was a favorite haunt of the caribou, moose and deer, who 
found in it enough rich food for sustenance without 
resorting to any other locality. 

Very pretty and promising all this, but "there's no 
rose without a thorn , ' ' and this rose of ours had one in 
the shape of a goose — a goose of a sportsman who was 
camped on a stream some two miles away from the pond. 



The ' 'goose" delighted in firing a rifle that burnt one 
hundred grains of powder behind a fifty calibre bullet and 
enjoyed himself hugely in loading up his miniature can- 
non and banging away at red squirrels, partridges and 
rabbits. He would leave his camp in the morning, walk 
to the pond and make the welkin ring for miles around 
with the noise of his snap shots and sight shots. 

The unwritten law of Maine in regard to the shooting 
rights on ponds or small lakes is that the sportsman 
who first puts a canoe upon a pond or small lake is 
safe from intrusion on the part of any other sportsman. 
Acting upon this hint we determined to paddle up a 
stream as far as we could, then carry our canoe to the 
pond and take possession, thus shutting out our noisy 
friend. So at four o'clock one morning, our strongest 
guide started, and after carrying his canoe on his back 
for a distance of two miles, placed it on the pond and 
returned to camp for breakfast. Then after our morning 
meal I started with another guide and walked to the pond 
loaded only with a tin cup, an axe and a rifle. We 
reached the pond at about half-past seven, got into the 
canoe, but at the very first dip of our paddle we heard 
the boom of the 50-100 rifle fired b}- our "goo.se" who 
was busy banging awa}^ at the red squirrels on the other 
side of the pond. This was not a cheerful .state of affairs 
to contemplate. Big game, as a rule, don't like cannon- 
ading nor a neighborhood that indulges in it. A few 
minutes after the noise of the shot and its echoes were 
sobered into silence, we saw a pair of deer two hundred 
yards away. My guide suggested that I try a shot at 
them, saying it would be a good idea, even if I missed 

126 



the deer, for it would let the goose — the other fellow — : 
know that there was a canoe on the pond , that the pond 
was mortgaged and he had better skip. The deer, how- 
ever, were in an awkward place to be shot at with effect. 
However, I did shoot and missed. They wheeled like a 
flash and bounded into the woods. The sound of the 
shot reached the goose with the 50-100 rifle who stepped 
out into the open, saw us, and started back for his camp. 
We now paddled to the other side of the pond and as 
the sun was coming out warm we left our coats and vests 
in the canoe, took with us a tin cup and four bouillon 
capsules and left, feeling sure that the cannonading 
already indulged in would hinder us seeing any more 
game that day, We left the canoe exactly at eight 
o'clock (I know, for I looked at my watch on starting). 
Not more than five minutes later my foot stumbled in the 
bog. Recovering my foothold and looking up I saw a 
sight that startled me almost as much as the ghost of 
Hamlet's father startled the melancholy Dane. Not a 
hundred yards away a great bull-moose, with wide-spread- 
ing antlers and dilated nostrils stood looking straight at 
me from between two trees. The place where he was 
standing was one where a man would least expect to see 
him, because, by all rules of prudence and usually safe 
moose conduct, the noise of the late rifle shots should by 
this time have driven him miles away from this locality. 
It appears it did not. And what did I do under the 
circumstances? Well, precisely what any other man 
would have done. Up went my rifle and without sighting 
or even an attempt to take careful aim, I blazed away. 
And the moose ? Ah ! Like a ghost he came and like a 

127 



ghost he disappeared. The guide — a French Canadian — 
said : ' ' Vat you shoot at ?" "A bull-moose, ' ' I replied, 
" Didn't you see him ?" " No, I no see him !" "Well," 
I said, "we'll take up his trail and see if he's hit." 
"You no hit him," he answered disdainfully. 

We tramped around trying to find his tracks without 
much hope of seeing the tell-tale drops of blood, for the 
bog was soft and the feet of the moose left no mark as he 
ran, and the red moss that covered the bog prevented the 
blood — if there was any — from showing on it. We finally 
worked out of the bog on the ground leading up to a 
ridge, and making careful search as we walked, found at 
last, a drop of fresh, hot blood on a leaf; then a little 
further on a pool of blood that would have filled a bucket. 
This blood was mixed with the pink tissue of the lungs, 
showing plainly that the bullet had gone through that 
organ of his anatomy. I now proposed to spot the trees 
so that we could find the place again, then go back to 
camp and give the moose a chance to lie down and bleed 
to death. My French Canadian, with a whiff of his old 
clay pipe, gave it as his opinion that the bull was mortally 
wounded, that we'd find him in a few minutes and advised 
that we follow^ him at once. We did so, finding no 
difficulty whatever, in tracking him, as his trail was 
almost a continuous stream of blood, excepting when his 
wound would apparently become clogged with a piece of 
tlie pink tissue, and then for a few yards we would lose 
his trail, but only for a few yards, for soon the gushing 
blood would spurt its passage through, forming another 
pool. And thus we followed on, over ridges and through 
swamps and bogs, hoping soon to catch a sight of our 

128 



expected prize. Sometimes we would strike a place 
where the bull had stopped to listen ; and again where he 
had gone around a windfall, showing he was hard hit if 
not mortally wounded. How did we reach these con- 
clusions? Simply enough. The hunter, if he be any- 
thing of a detective, which he should be, on seeing, as 
we saw, a plainly drawn half circle of blood, would say, 
" Here he stopped and turned half round to listen." In 

the second instance, if 
he had not been hard 
hit he would have 
gone over the windfall 
and not around it. 
Once we saw where 
he had leaned against 
a tree, either to rest 
or listen, or both, but 
nowhere was there any 
Twice in our pursuit 
we heard him crashing through the brush ahead of us, 
but at neither time were we fortunate enough to catch a 
glimpse of him . 

Our brain befuddled with the chase, 

We took no note of time or space, 
and before we were aware of it the morning hours had 
gone and we found ourselves on the borders of another 
lake, miles away from our canoe and from our camp. 

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, when we built 
a little fire, heated some water in our tin cup and boiled a 
bouillon capsule for each of us which we drank. The 
next consideration was "what shall we do now?" The 




ON A PILE OF SAWDUST. 



evidence that he had lain down. 



guide said we were about four and a half miles from the 
canoe, and that in following the twists and turns of the 
wounded bull we had covered a distance of about eighteen 
miles. His advice was that we start at once for our 
canoe, but first to ' ' spot ' ' the trees with the axe to enable 
us to take up the bull's trail again and track him to his 
death bed. So at half-past three we started back, the 
guide assuring me that he knew the way perfectly well. 
Maybe he did, but coming events cast a sort of a shadow 
over my mind — maybe he didn't. He first led us 
through an alder swamp, that only needed a Bengal tiger 
or two to rival an Indian jungle. Lathered with perspira- 
tion we finally got through this and faced a high ridge 
covered with numerous windfalls. After scaling this and 
getting down on the other side of it we found ourselves 
in a dense cedar swamp, wandering here and there, and 
perspiring at every pore with the labor of climbing over 
and under logs, and jumping windfalls. Then came 
the pleasant conviction : ' ' We are lost ! ' ' 

It was nearly dark, the weather had turned cold, and 
no time was to be lost in getting some wood together and 
starting a fire. Here we were in what might righteously 
be called a constipated predicament ; without coat or vest, 
or blanket, or tent, with nothing to eat and nothing to 
drink. Could we have found water our remaining two 
l)Ouillon capsules would have made us a good supper; 
but there was no water and consequently no supper. 
The best and only thing to do now, I did. I pulled off 
my hip rubber boots, intending to use them for a pillow, 
dried my few clothes, wet from perspiration, and kept 
close to the fire to avoid catching cold from the bare 

130 



ground and freezing air. M5' purpose was not to sleep, 
but keep awake. "Tired Nature," however, wouldn't 
be denied her "sweet restorer," and soon I was in a 
slumber that lasted till eleven o'clock, when I awoke to 
find the cold intense. Piling more wood on the fire, I 
threw myself again on Mother Earth's bosom and slept 
till two, when the frost settling on my face like sharp 
needles awoke me. Again I replenished the fire and 
again slept till five, when I awoke in time to catch 
Aurora at her morning task of decorating the oriental 
sky. And, I ma}^ safely saj', I never watched her with 
greater satisfaction, for never before was daylight so 
welcome to me. 

Our search now was for water, but we succeeded in 
finding none. We did find, how^ever, under an upturned 
cedar root, a thin sheet of ice. This we broke and melted 
in our tin cup over the fire and then cooked our capsules 
in it. Such was our breakfast, and I am rather sure 
the Roman glutton lyiicullus never experienced greater 
satisfaction over one of his ten thousand dollar dinners 
than we did over that simple meal of bouillon. 

After our breakfast we found a lumber road and 
followed it for about three miles to a great marsh or 
meadow. Here we obtained our bearings, discovering 
that we were about five miles from camp which we reached 
at eleven o'clock that forenoon, thankful and happy to 
see once more our white tent and the guide we had left 
behind whose anxious face told plainly of his alarm at our 
absence. He had been firing shots at frequent intervals 
during the night, but the distance between us prevented 
our hearing them. We had been tramping around an 



ever-widening circle, until night compelled us to stop. 
My French Canadian guide, who was one of the ' ' I-know- 
it-all " men, had nothing to say in extenuation but this : 
" I don't compre' how it all did happen. I did know ze 
way sure, and then I didn't. I feel much sorry, but ze 
nex time I go by ze compass not by ze knows how." 




ADVENTURES OF A DEER HUNTER IN 
MAINE. 

Escai^ed with the skin of my teeth. 

—Job XIX. 20. 

OF all the things in this world which are not pic- 
turesque the breaking of camp after a long season 
spent in the woods of Maine comes close to being at 
the top. We had spent many long and exciting days in 
the wilds of Maine, and camp was broken at six in the 
morning. The camp had been on a high ledge, over- 
looking a circular sheet of water, known as Moose Pond, 
and flanked by bogs on two sides, a cove at one side and 
the outlet into it from a small lake above. It was a 
dismal day, and the three guides looked glum when we 
started to make our way out of the pond through the 
cove into the lake beyond. The wind blew directly in 
our faces, and the guides seemed to be afraid of every- 
thing. First they were afraid they could not get the 
canoes around the point, then afraid they would have to 
camp on the shore of the cove,— in fact there was nothing 
they were not afraid of. Finally, my son and I told them 
that if they would only put us on the other side of the 
cove we would lighten the canoes by walking the three 
miles across the point and through the woods. 



Well, we started, and, although it rained buckets of 
water, I rather enjoyed the experience. We found many 
fresh tracks of big game, the windfalls were few, and as 
the path was deeply carpeted with fresh fallen leaves the 
walk was anything but tedious. 

As I emerged from the forest the road led through a 
piece of burnt land. I heard a cow-bell jingling, and 
soon spied some cattle feeding off to the right and straight 
in front of me two big does. But they had scented me, 
and as they threw their heels up and bounded away I 
tried a shot at the nearest one, but — ah, there's that 
"but" again ! — I missed, and the deer were, in a twink- 
ling, safely into the timber. 

We reached the lake, and then had a long wait for 
the canoes. On their arrival we found one of them had 
shipped a good bit of water, and that they all had had a 
narrow call from capsizing. As the wind was increasing 
every minute, and it was necessary for us to cross the 
lake (here about a mile and a half wide), we put the 
baggage into one canoe, and with our strongest guide to 
handle the stern paddle and I to use the bow paddle, 
while my son squatted down in the centre of the canoe, 
we pushed out into the hissing, boiling water. The wind 
was blowing a gale straight down the lake, and so strong 
as to pick the water up from the top of the white caps 
and blow it around us in the shape of fine spray. Our 
course lay diagonally across or up the lake in the teeth 
of the gale, and hardly had we gotten a hundred yards 
from shore before my son's "souwester" hat was 
knocked off by the guide's paddle. But that was no 

134 



place nor time to stop for a hat. The canoe mounted and 
rode the waves beautifully, and yet at times it seemed as 
if the wind would blow us over, or actually out of the 
water, particularly when we reached the centre of the 
lake and the canoe was turned obliquely down towards 
the other shore. Then we had to paddle for our very 
lives, and to watch the waves and see that they didn't 
break over us. When the light canoe was going down 
the sloping sides or in the hollow of a big wave we had 
to use every pound of our reserve strength to shove her 
along before another mountain of water caught us . It was 
indeed a ticklish trip, for had we capsized we would have 
had no show whatever in the icy water, as our heavy 
hip boots would have prevented an}^ chance of swimming 
or of a rescue. We fully appreciated the situation. 
However, we got over without mishap, other than a 
wetting, a lost hat, and a profuse perspiration from hard 
paddling. We were safe and for this we devoutedly 
thanked the Ordainer of all things. 

We stopped for dinner at a little frame hotel, the 
' ' Chesuncook House, ' ' which is the last sign or semblance 
of a hostelry you see before plunging into the great 
wilderness beyond. Among those who were making the 
hotel their headquarters were three ' ' sports ' ' who went 
out in the morning to hunt and returned at night to 
recuperate. They had killed a nice buck the day before 
our arrival and had set it up on the shore of the lake for 
inspection. It was hanging from a trident formed of 
three poles, and while the rain beat upon it and the wind 
swayed it to and fro, the hunters watched it with admiring 
eyes; and well they might, for it was a beauty. 

135 



Now two of the aforesaid sports were from Wood- 
bur5^ N. J. and the other from Boston. The Boston man 
and one of the Woodbury men were built on the corpu- 
lent model, extremely oily, and with a girth that might 
have rivaled Falstaff's. But they were not sensitive on 
that point as some oleaginous men I know are ; men to 
whom the slightest reference or even glance in a stomach- 
ward direction would be at once a casus belli. 

Our conversation at dinner turned upon the treat- 
ment they had been experiencing from their guides. 
" Do you know," said the Boston man, " I have had the 
most unpleasant experience rubbed into me by these 
guides and I don't care to have the operation repeated." 

"What was the nature of the operation?" I ventured 
to ask. 

"Well, you probably have noticed that I have a 
good deal of butter in my make-up, and I don't care to 
have it all melted at once, which .seemed to be what these 
guides were after. They told us that the Ambezuskas 
meadow was a glorious place to hunt in, and so it may be 
for a lean man ; surely no fat man could find any glory in 
it unless his fat be of a tougher quality than mine. 
Imagine three hundred pounds of flesh floundering 
through mud and water, tripping over cedar roots, falling 
over logs, struggling for a little temporary foothold in 
order to pull oneself out of the nuid and regain an upright 
position while the guide stands at a safe distance away, 
beckoning and shouting ' ' come on ! " After this part of 
the programme had been repeated several times, always 
winding up with " come on," tired Nature gave out and 

136 



refused to comply with the guide's mandate. Mounting 
a stump I gathered together what little strength I had 

left and put it all into a shout, "You be d d ! I'll not 

'come on' any more. 'Come on' ^^ourself, that's what 
I'm paying you for.' ' 

His story, by the way, reminds me of another which 
is short enough and good enough to fit in here. Two 
would-be deer hunters, one thin and wiry, the other 
round and oily, had struck a trail, and the thin fellow 
lifting his eyes saw a big buck bounding direct!}^ towards 
them. ''There he comes! lie down !" shouted the thin 
chap, but seeing no reduction in the obtrusive size of his 
companion again he shouted, "Lie down ! Lie down !" 

This time an answer came from the direction of the 
butter pile. 

"D n it all, I am lying down !" 

"The d 1 you are ! Then stand up and perhaps 

the buck won't see you !" 

We left Chesuncook Lake at half-past one in the 
afternoon, fixed our loads in the canoes for our up-river 
trip at a landing stage, near the mouth of the river, and 
still in the driving, pitiless rain, we started to paddle up 
the river, intending to reach the "Halfway House" (a 
resort for lumbermen, freighters and sportsmen, about 
eleven miles up the river,) before dark. On the trip up 
the "sport" is expected to leave the canoe and walk 
around the obstructions in the stream known as the ' ' Pine 
Stream Falls," "Rocky Rips," and the "Foxhole 
Rapids," while the guide with the lightened canoe poles 
it up against the swift current which swirls and eddies 
around the huge rocks lying in all sorts of ways and 



angles in the bed of the stream. We walked therefore 
through a path in the woods around ' ' Pine Stream 
Falls '" and the " Rocky Rips," and above them was a 
stretch of " dead water, ' ' which ended at the foot of ' 'Fox 
Hole Rapids." Here we left the canoes again, and took 
to the road, which runs in a pretty straight direction, 
while the river makes a great bend off to the right, and 
the road for the distance of, say a mile and a half, cuts off 
quite a detour in the river. Just as we entered this road 
I told my son to walk on ahead very carefully until we 
came to a piece of burnt land, that I recollected as being 
quite a feeding ground for deer, as he might get a shot. 
As he was emerging from the woods on to this burnt land 
I saw him stop, and take his rifle from under his arm (for 
it was still pouring rain) aim, and fire. I saw a deer 
bound away and the youth jumping over burnt timber 
and scrambling through stunted brush. Again I saw him 
aim and fire, and I saw the deer drop. Now we were in 
a pickle ; night was coming on fast and the canoes were 
away off to the right. The rain was splashing down in 
torrents. There was no time to wait, so we at once 
opened the deer and took out the " inwards," cut a 
sapling with our knives, ran it through the " hocks " of 
the deer, slung it on our shoulders and started for the 
road. This road is called a " tote road" by courtesy, 
and in winter it is much used for hauling supplies on 
when there is a good depth of snow. 

In summer and fall it is not much used, and there 
are rocks upon it, roots upon it, and holes in it, that 
would shame the "Slough of Despond." It was now 
dusk, and soon — oh, so soon — it became pitch dark, and 

138 



the rain , how it did pour ! We stumbled and slid along 
" uber stick and stein," and also over roots and " stein," 
and water and mud, swaying from side to side with our 
unwieldy load, rifle in one hand and the other steadying 
the pole on our shoulders, every now and then tramping 
on the deer's head, which hung and dragged on the 
ground. So for the mile and a half we trudged and 
trudged until the canoes were reached. 

Here we found the guides angry and alarmed at our 
prolonged absence, and, as they were soaking wet, we 
couldn't blame them. We got into the canoes again and 
paddled as hard as we could until a welcome light shone 
ahead at the " Halfway House." This house is away up 
on a clay bank, set far enough back from the river so that 
the spring and fall floods won 't wash it away . Now a steep 
clayey bank on a night when the water is pouring down 
is not a nice one for a lot of half- frozen, half-drowned 
men to clamber up. We slid and slipped here and there, 
now down and now up, until we were well covered with 
clay, but we were cheerful withal, and that's a great deal 
towards contentment. We at last reached the house, had 
our baggage brought in, and, to our disgust, found every- 
thing was wet, overcoats, blankets, underclothes, nega- 
tives, etc., etc. A big fire was built in a big stove. We 
ate supper, hung our wet clothes around the fire, emptied 
all of our luggage sacks and hung the contents of them 
upon the chairs and benches as well upon the wall, 
and then to bed, where we slept the sweet sleep that 
comes to all men who labor out in the open air, and who 
whimper not at storm or cold but try to make the best of 
everything that fortune is pleased to shower upon them. 

339 



At half-past three the next morning we tumbled out 
of bed, ate a hasty breakfast of bread and butter and 
bacon and coffee, repacked all our things (which now 
were dr}-) in their proper sacks, carried them down and 
placed them in the canoes and before the goddess of morn 
had time to get her e3^es open we pushed off for our last 
canoeing trip of the season. 




jUSfc THfc btAVEn 



The pouring rain ot the night before had ceased and 
now the weather had turned so cold that the water froze 
upon our paddles, and the river was so nearh^ frozen that 
there was little or no spring in the canoes. 'Twas a dead 
push all the way up to the " North East Carry." Our 
leather boots we had not been able to draw on, b}^ reason 
of their soaking of the night before, and rubber boots had 
to be substituted, which, in that biting cold, made it 
uncomfortable paddling. After a run of four miles we 

140 



were glad to push the canoes ashore, build a fire and 
warm up. At about nine o'clock we landed at the 
"Carry," hired a wagon to "tote" our stuff over to 
Moosehead Lake and then we walked the two miles of 
good road, which constitutes this famous " Carry." 

At the little hotel at the lake end of the "Carry " 
we had to wait several hours for a steamboat to take us 
to Greenville, forty miles away, where the train is taken 
for Bangor. Here I noticed a youth who looked feeble 
and sick, as if nigh unto death. He was a farmer's bo}', 
whose home was near Hartford, Conn. On the farm he 
had read and reread stories of hunters ; of their happy 
lives in the woods, and their ignorance of restraint. The 
reading of Cooper's novels had so fired his imagination 
he believed that all he had to do to be and live the life 
of a hunter was to take into the woods with him a rifle 
and a rubber blanket. This was not a theory with him 
to dream over, but one to act upon, and in reality that 
was exactly what he did. He came alone from his 
farm, went alone into the woods and very soon stalked a 
deer which he succeeded in killing. Then his youthful 
breast beat high with rapture as he saw the noble quarry 
lying at his feet. But hunger must be appeased, and he 
was hungry, no doubt about that. He dressed the deer, 
cut a steak, still reeking with animal heat, built a fire, 
toasted the venison on a stick and greedily ate it. Then 
spreading his rubber blanket upon the ground and without 
either blanket to cover him or sleeping bag to crawl into, 
he laid him down in the frosty air and slept the sleep of 
youth and tired-out nature. Next morning he awoke 
with shivering body and chattering teeth and a burning 



pain in tlie intestines. Hanging his deer up in a tree as 
well as he could, he built a fresh fire and tried to warm 
his body and dispel the chill which at last gave way to a 
fe\'er and a splitting headache. The morning passed, 
noon came, and night, and there he lay. On the morning 
of the second day, prone upon the ground, with the red 
squirrels busy about him gathering their winter stores, 
the poor boy lay. Here, sick, far from home, from 
kindred, from a mother's tender care, from a doctor's 
aid, he was found by a party of lumbermen, who carried 
him to their camp and nursed and fed him as well as they 
could for six days. Then as the winter was fast closing 
in they sent a man out of the woods with him to the 
"Carr3^" and here I saw him. His attendant a.sked me 
if I would look after him as far as I went. I told him 
nothing could give me more pleasure than to do so. 

When the steamboat arrived I took him aboard, got 
a sofa for him to lie upon, and then looked m}- medicine 
chest over. Picking out some tablets, which had a very 
little morphia in them, I gave him one of these every 
three hours, and made him drink hot milk with some 
cayenne pepper in it. 

We reached Greenville very late at night, leaving at 
six the next morning and arrived at Bangor about noon, 
which place we left sometime in the early afternoon. At 
these places and wherever and whenever I could get the 
hot milk I made the poor boy drink it. At Portland, I 
had a doctor examine him who said that the boy was 
certainly in the early stages of typhoid fever and that he 
also had intestinal catarrh, caused bj^ the eating of the 
venison before it had parted with its animal heat. The 

142 



doctor also said that the tablets I had given him were 
' ' right " and that the hot milk was ' ' right . ' ' We reached 
Boston at nine o'clock in the evening, and thinking that 
the train I was to take was the same which was to carry 
the boy to his home, I took him to the Providence 
depot, but found I was mistaken, and that he had to go 
by the Boston and Albany Railway. My time was short 
and his too. Checking my own baggage I engaged my 
berth to Philadelphia, and leaving my son with the re- 
mainder of the stuff, started for the other depot. It was 
raining heavily, and at that time of night I could find 
neither carriage nor street car, and so was compelled 
partly to support and carry, and partly to drag the sick 
boy on the way. We reached the train with five minutes 
to spare. After buying his ticket I helped him into a 
car, laid him down and then hunted up the conductor — a 
portly, pompous, beggar-on- horse-back sort of a fellow — 
and asked him if he w^ouldn't kindly look after the boy to 
the end of his division and then ask the following con- 
ductor also to see to his comfort. His reply was perhaps 
what I might have expected. "No, sir! I have no 
time to look after sick people. I've got my train to 
attend to, and if the boy gives me any trouble I'll put him 
off at Worcester and send him to the hospital." A man 
was standing near him (probably a railway oJeBcial) who 
had listened to my story and request and to the con- 
ductor's reply. He turned quickly to the man of brass 
buttons and swinging lantern, and spoke with a frown. 
The words were few and their purport I did not catch, 
but, whatever it may have been, the change was magical. 
The conductor came toward me and in the most polite 



and cringing manner promised to look after the boy. 
Then the semaphore over the gate changed from red to 
white, the bell rang, a shout of "All aboard" and with 
measured puff the train was on its way. 

My own train was to leave at midnight and I hurried 
back to it through the rain which pelted in torrents and 
wet me through. However, it took but little time to get 
undressed and into my berth. A few moments afterwards 
I felt the train moving out of the station, and then all 
knowledge and recollection took a back seat. I knew, 
nothing until I awoke next morning in Philadelphia, 
fully aware then that the hunting season of 1896 was over, 
that I was back among my friends and loved ones, sound 
in mind and limb, revived in brain and ready for any 
amount of work. Verily, 

" Huuting is an exercise 
To make man sturdy, active, wise ; 
To fill his spirits with delight, 
To help his hearing, mend his sight, 
To teach him arts that never slip 
His memory ; canoemanship, 
And search and sharpness and defense, 
And all ill halnts chaseth hence." 




THE YOUNG HUNTER. 

JAMES J. MARTINDALE AT 13 YEARS, WHEN HE KILLED HIS FIRST GAME. 



A PARTING SHOT. 

Have you with heed perused What I have written to you ? 

— Coriolanus. 

Y^LUTARCH says: " Recreation is the sweet sauce 
jj^ of labor," a fact of which the American business 
\_^^ man who usually swallows his labor with no sauce 
at all, should make a note. 

" What so strong 
Btit wanting rest will also want the might ? 
The Sun that measures heaven all day long, 
At night doth bait his steeds the ocean waves among." 

The labors of old Sol, to be sure, are a little out of 
the line of the business man, but not so much out of it 
that he can afford to disregard the example or declare 
that rest and recreation are but snares, 

Delusions mere, inventions of the devil, 

to bamboozle the thrifty and keep up the world's stock of 
drones. If the devil did invent them I have a much 
higher opinion of him than usually obtains, and the 
proverb is right — the old fellow is " not so black as he's 
painted." 

What I have recited in the foregoing pages comprises 
but a small portion of the very macy pleasant and excit- 
ing incidents and experiences enjoyed in my tussle with 

146 



the wilds of Nature. Though the time was comparatively 
short the trips were not. By laud and water, by rail, 
steamboat, wagon, buckboard, yacht, row-boat and birch- 
bark canoe, the miles covered were over ten thousand. 
No trifling distance ; and yet through it all I was never 
ill but once, and the damage done then was not serious 
enough to prevent my returning home, 

" Full of vigor, tough and glad, 
Feeling like a wiry lad," 

and with a capacity for work that was well worth its cost 
of two months time. 

And now a parting word to you, you man of business, 
chained like a felon in his cell, bereft of sunlight, 
harassed with care, tiring your brain over the one mighty 
problem of money-making — or else some scheme to stave 
off financial disaster — 'twill pay you to ponder on my 
words and my experience and call a halt. Make up your 
mind that money without health is a much greater 
calamity than health without money. Leave your desk 
and turn your back on the steaming streets of civilization 
and your thoughts where Nature tempts with her trout 
streams, her mirrored lakes and her game-abounding 
retreats; to her forests, fragrant with balsamic odors and 
watered by living streams, streams wholesome with the 
leechings of the Spruce, and Pine, and Cedar — Nature's 
own nectar; a draught of it and you'll need no other 
stimulant. Then when the days sport is over and the 
night comes, what a revelation is in store for you ! Cud- 
dled in your warm sleeping bag, with plenty of blankets, 
you "lay me down" on your bed of spruce boughs, 

147 



whose odors play thick aboiit you, filling the air and 
soothing you quickly into babe-like slumber. In the 
morning, spryer than the sun, you leave your bed before 
him, armed with a double-edged apppetite, so keen and 
new you wonder where it came from. Trust me for what 
I tell you, but even my words but faintly speak the novel 
joys which await you. Once more I say, forget "the 
shop" and all which that implies, and with the poet 
Rowe you may exclaim to some purpose : 

" Begone my cares ! I give you to the winds." 

THOMAS MARTINDALE. 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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